Barry Cheung, the top aide of Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying, said late Friday he has resigned from all his public offices, including a post in Leung's Cabinet, as police filed charges against three men in connection with financial irregularities involving a short-lived commodities trading house majority-owned by Cheung.
In a statement, Cheung said he was assisting the criminal probe into Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange Ltd. and has never done anything illegal, and that he only decided to step down from his public posts so as not to affect the operation of the bodies he was serving, the government-funded media RTHK said.