A former Chinese University Associate Professor has been convicted at the District Court for swindling $1.5 million in housing allowances.

Paul Chan, 52, admitted five counts of an agent using a document with intent to deceive his principal, and was sentenced to four months' jail today.

In sentencing, Judge Fergal Sweeney reprimanded the defendant for premeditating the fraud, which lasted a long period of time.

At the time of the offences, Chan was an Associate Professor in the university's School of Accountancy. Between June 1993 and December 1998, he filed four Private Tenancy Allowance applications for a South Horizons flat, and successfully obtained $1.5 million in allowances.

Chan had declared in his applications that neither he, his spouse nor any of their relations had a financial interest in the leased property.

Independent Commission Against Corruption investigations found the registered owner of the property was a company controlled by the defendant, his relatives and his spouse's relatives.

He had declared that none of the people named in another document were his spouse or their relations.

He left Hong Kong for Australia in July 2000, and a warrant for his arrest was issued two years later. He was arrested by the Australian Federal Police in Melbourne last May at the request of the Hong Kong Government, and in August the Australian Minister for Justice & Customs signed a surrender warrant for his return.