UPDATE: 4/3/2012, 6.57 p.m. The seventh paragraph has been updated to reflect the Kwok brothers’ public response to their arrest.

In Hong Kong, big property developers sit at the very top of the food chain. So the arrest last Thursday of two of the biggest–billionaire brothers Raymond and Thomas Kwok, co-chairmen of Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd.–on suspicion of bribery has unleashed a media firestorm in the Asian financial capital.