For his contribution to the Gospel of John sermon series at Hong Kong’s Faith Community Church last October, Pastor Raymond C. Lee took as his inspiration a stanza in the Lord’s Prayer: ”Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).

Mr Lee was meditating on the miracle of Christian forgiveness and debts of a moral, rather than material, nature – ”And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” is a more common rendering.

But from a purely modern and literal perspective, the subject of Mr Lee’s sermon – a recording of which can be accessed at the Faith Community Church’s website – (www.faithcommunitychurch.org.hk) proved prophetic. For Mr Lee is better known as the founder and chairman of Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, the budget airline that suspended operations earlier this month.

The airline was always an unlikely venture for Mr Lee. The pastor made his money in the Greater Boston area through Oasis Development Enterprises, which is described on its website as ”a real estate investment company based on biblical values and the pursuit of excellence”.

In any other market, the short life and sudden death of a budget carrier would be a fairly routine matter. Oasis had, depending on whom you ask, either the innovative or foolhardy notion that it could apply the low-budget model to long-distance routes, such as Hong Kong-London and Hong Kong-Vancouver.

It launched in October 2006 when jet fuel was trading at $600 a tonne, encountered stiff resistance from well entrenched rivals and finally crashed and burned with jet fuel trading at $1,137 a tonne. As one long-term Oasis cynic puts it: ”They were doomed anyway. But when [crude] oil went through $110 [a barrel] they were super-doomed.” At the end, all that remained was Mr Lee’s hope that divine intervention, in the form of an angel investor, would raise his airline from the dead.

”It is with extreme sadness in our hearts that we announce ... Oasis Hong Kong Airlines has just applied to the court and the court has appointed KPMG as our provisional liquidator,” Mr Lee and his wife Priscilla wrote in an open letter on April 9. ”It is our wish and goal that ... the right financial/strategic ’white knight’ will come along to bring this company to new heights in the very near future.”

Rival airline executives scoffed as schadenfreude set in. ”I don’t think anyone with any sense at all would go near it,” one of them told On Asia. ”The model demonstrably doesn’t work. They would have to have rocks in their head [to rescue Oasis].”

Rocks in their heads or not, executives at China’s Hainan Airlines contemplated just such a rescue, according to one person familiar with the situation, and dispatched a team to conduct due diligence on Oasis. That’s when the issue of debts – and their forgiveness – entered the equation.

One day after Oasis gave up its ghost, Cheung Kong Holdings, the flagship company of tycoon Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s richest man, confirmed that it had ”provided a loan to persons connected to Oasis Hong Kong”. ”The loan is of a personal nature,” the company added. ”The Cheung Kong Group is not a shareholder nor a creditor of Oasis.”

Mr Lee subsequently told local media that he had in fact received a $10m loan, secured in part against his shares in Oasis, ”to meet the urgent cash needs of the airline”. One person who is watching the situation closely says the Lees also put up property as collateral. ”Cheung Kong’s money is safe,” he says.

The practical effect of this loan arrangement was to put Cheung Kong between Oasis and potential buyers such as Hainan Airlines. ”It’s very sad because it’s not like Oasis was without suitors,” one person involved said this week. ”We’re just sitting, watching and waiting. But it has to [happen] in days not weeks.”

Cheung Kong is a property giant with complementary exposure to global infrastructure assets through Hutchison Whampoa, which it controls. Cheung Kong shareholders may well ask why company management is signing off on personal loans to a flying pastor. As one person close to the company says: ”Cheung Kong is not a bank. I didn’t know they were in the business of making risky loans.”

Cheung Kong’s involvement is all the more curious considering that Mr Li and his eldest son Victor, who took an unsuccessful run at Air Canada five years ago, could easily have put up the money in their personal capacity.

A $10m loan barely registers as a footnote at Cheung Kong, which has treated the whole affair as just that. The company has issued only two terse statements on the matter – the first confirming the loan and the second to clarify that it ”has not made any offer to purchase Oasis and is not exploring the matter”. The company declined to comment further. Raymond Lee did not respond to a request for comment.

Given Cheung Kong’s clear expression of non-interest in Oasis, some are speculating that the loan could be that rarest of phenomena – a simple act of charity between friendly Hong Kong tycoons, albeit with interest and plenty of security attached. But the actual forgiveness of this debt, as Pastor Lee well knows, would be another matter entirely.