A Hong Kong court jailed one of the city’s highest profile businesswomen for three and a half years yesterday after she engineered a $3.7 million stock scam, a court official said.

Lily Chiang, 50, the former head of Hong Kong’s General Chamber of Commerce, was convicted last week of fraud, conspiracy to defraud and authorising the issue of a misleading prospectus.

Passing sentence, Judge Albert Wong, who earlier described Chiang as an “author of dishonesty”, said the entrepreneur had “tarnished Hong Kong’s reputation as an international financial hub”, local radio RTHK reported.

Chiang had been accused of instructing subordinates to hold stock options in two companies on her behalf, contrary to city listing rules.

She hid from the city’s securities watchdog that she was “the real beneficial owner” of the options and allowed Hong Kong’s stock exchange to approve a prospectus of Eco-Tek Holdings, which contained false information, the judge said last week.

Chiang, who was charged in 2008, is planning an appeal, the South China Morning Post has reported.

She launched a series of judicial reviews and appeals that reached all the way to the city’s top adjudicator, the Court of Final Appeal, to have her case heard by a jury instead of a judge, a bid she ultimately lost.