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Twenty-five-year-old male singer Kelvin Kwan Chor-yiu who made appearances in several anti-drug campaigns was on a secret vacation in Japan on 24 February with female singer Jill Vidal with whom he was reported recently to be in a romance. They were both arrested for possession of marijuana by the local Japanese police who arrived at the scene originally to investigate a theft case in which the two were held suspects. Kwan initially admitted that the drug was brought to Tokyo from Hong Kong but Vidal denied knowing about the drug. They are still assisting the Japanese police in investigating the case. Hong Kong police responded, saying that they did not yet receive any notification from their counterparts in Japan while the Security Bureau refused to comment on the incident. The record labels of the two singers expressed disappointment separately and feared that the incident would have a negative effect on the image of Hong Kong artistes.
According to a Kyodo News report, Canadian passport holder Kelvin Kwan and 26-year-old British passport holder Jill Vidal entered Japan as tourists on 20 February. In the small hours of 24 February, Japanese police received a report of theft in a shop in Dogenzaka in Shibuya, a district of Tokyo. Kwan and Vidal were having an argument with the shopkeeper who called the police claiming that “two foreigners, a male and a female, were caught stealing”. Police later arrived at the scene to investigate the case.
Referring to a statement by the Shibuya station of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, the report said that a police officer searched Kwan's personal belongings and found marijuana in a pack of cigarettes inside a paper bag.
The irony of the case is that Kwan previously appeared as a guest performer in the Anti-Cross-Boundary Drug Abuse programme organized by the Narcotics Division in July 2006, advising the public not to violate the law and traffic drugs in and out of Hong Kong. More recently, on 22 November 2008, Kwan and Vidal appeared together in the North District Anti-Drug and Fight Crime Variety Show 2008 organized by the North District Fight Crime Committee and produced by Radio 1 of Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), promoting anti-drug and fight-crime messages to Hong Kong citizens. It came as a surprise when three months later both of them were arrested for drug possession in Tokyo. translated by開明
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