HONG KONG: Hong Kong charged seven people and two companies on Wednesday (Jun 10) over the world’s deadliest residential building fire in decades, which killed 168 people at a public housing estate last year. The massive blaze, which engulfed seven of the eight high-rise apartment blocks at the Wang Fuk Court estate in November, prompted a months-long investigation in to the cause. Public hearings were told that almost all life-saving fire safety measures had failed on the day of the blaze because of human errors. Authorities “today charged seven individuals and two companies with 25 counts of offences, including manslaughter, conspiracy to defraud, ‘money laundering’, attempting to pervert the course of public justice, and tax evasion”, the government said in a statement Wednesday. The seven people charged included directors and inspectors of a consultancy firm involved in the estate’s renovation, as well as the main contractor involved in the project, according to the statement. Substandard construction safety netting and cigarette butts were focal points of the probe into the causes and rapid spread of the …