Corruption in multi-storey building renovation is so rife, Sai Kung District Councillor Christine Fong said, she has distributed 20,000 booklets on how to prevent bid rigging. Her office has also helped more than 100 residents take complaints to the ICAC.
Christine said temptation is high when small groups handle large amounts of public money. “We are talking about billions of dollars.” No prosecutions have been launched by the ICAC after investigations of the cases her office has handled, because corrupt individuals know how to exploit loopholes in the law.
Some Sai Kung District Councillors are chairmen of building owners’ incorporated committees, she said, and therefore in conflict of interest. Christine alleges the number of councillors who sit on the district board that are there for altruistic reasons and the number who are there because they see scope for business and personal advancement is about half and half. “If you are seen as a big shot the Government looks away. The closer you are to power the more opportunities will come your way.”
Christine’s booklet entitled Bid Rigging has been circulated throughout Sai Kung, Clearwater Bay, Tseung Kwan O, Shatin and Taipo. It advises residents on the step by step process of renovating common areas of buildings. With other councillors and NGOs she has organised a campaign, “Fighting Bid Rigging Cartels”.
One of the first acts of the relatively new Competition Commission (CC) was to study bid rigging and advise ways to prevent it. The CC said its findings were “consistent with the widely alleged bid-manipulation practices outlined”, then lapsed into bureaucratic waffling. There was “no proof of such activities actually taking place”. The Commission said it had received more than 1000 complaints of anti-competitive behaviour (this was in mid-2016). The Government has put up about $3.5 billion over the past eight years to subsidise renovation of buildings more than 30 years old. Suspiciously low bidding was identified by the CC. “One possible interpretation would be that consultants bid aggressively low in order to win a project and subsequently benefit from awarding renovation work to particular contractors.”
In September a judge sentenced a subcontractor to 35 months in jail for a rigged $260m million project. The case came to light, the judge noted, because one of the corrupt individuals involved complained he didn’t get his 0.5 per cent share.
Christine said there are some examples of less than salubrious behaviour by Sai Kung councillors. A number have conflicts of interest because of land holdings. She said there was reason to question what had gone on behind the scenes over some major projects in the district. Normally developments of any scale are presented to the District Council. Some multi-million-dollar schemes are quietly waved through by key people, she said.
Be the first to comment