The charge is manslaughter. Prosecutors filed it Thursday in connection with the fire that killed 168 people, and the brief before the court used the phrase "fuelled by greed" to describe the decisions that shaped the building's condition on the day it burned. That phrase did not come from a coroner's inquest. It is the prosecution's.

In Hong Kong, the calculation that a building owner makes when subdividing a floor or skipping a fire exit survey has always had a ceiling: a fine, a remediation order, an instruction to fix it. Not a criminal count. That ceiling dropped Thursday. The Department of Justice named a developer; what prosecutors must now establish is the specific chain of decisions, floor by floor, permit by permit, that produced a building the fire could not leave. The manslaughter charge was filed on 11 June 2026.