David Leung

David Leung Cheuk-yin SC (Chinese: 梁卓然, born on 15 December 1966) is a Hong Kong barrister who served as the sixth Director of Public Prosecutions of Hong Kong. He was educated at the University of Hong Kong, before becoming a solicitor in 1992. He joined the Prosecutions Division of the Department of Justice in 1995, and subsequently was called to the Hong Kong Bar in 1998 and held a number of senior roles in the Division, including serving as Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions in 2012. He became a Senior Counsel in 2015. On 29 December 2017, Leung was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions. He was described by Rimsky Yuen, SC, the Secretary for Justice at the time, as “the in-house expert on the law relating to public order events … and cost matters”. Leung was involved in a number of high-profile prosecutions, including those around the 2014 Hong Kong protests, 2016 Mong Kok civil unrest, and the legality of Uber's operation in Hong Kong. In July 2020, Leung resigned from the Department of Justice, citing differences with his minister, Justice Secretary Teresa Cheng, and stated that he had been excluded from handling national security cases. Despite leading some prosecutions, he was seen by pro-Beijing politicians and the police as being too cautious to charge some protesters. He left office on 31 December 2020.