A seafood supplier and four former chefs of three restaurants have been charged by the ICAC for offering and accepting bribes totalling about $46,000 for placing food orders.

The defendants will appear in four separate cases in Eastern Magistracy for plea at 9:30 am on Monday (March 8).

D1, 54, an operator of two seafood suppliers (Company A and Company B), faces two counts of offering an advantage. He is also jointly charged with D2, 47, a former chef of a hotpot restaurant (Restaurant A), with one count of conspiracy to defraud.

Also charged in the same case, D2 faces one count of agent accepting an advantage, while D3, 40, another former chef of Restaurant A faces a similar offence.

The charges allege that between January and May last year, D1 offered $4,830 and $7,210 respectively to D2 and D3 as rebates for them to place orders of frozen shrimps from Company A. D2 and D3 allegedly accepted the said sum from D1 for the same purpose.

D1 and D2 are alleged of conspiring together between February and May last year to defraud Restaurant A by falsely representing that Company A had delivered frozen shrimps to the said restaurant.

They had also allegedly prepared and submitted false invoices of Company A to Restaurant A, causing payments to be made to the former.

In addition, D1 is charged with one count of offering $32,500 to a chef of a restaurant group between April and May 2009 for the latter to place or continue to place orders of frozen shrimps with Company A.

Meanwhile, D4, 49, a former dim sum chef of Restaurant B, faces one count of accepting $1,800 from D1 between December 2008 and February 2009 as a reward for ordering seafood from Company B.

In the last case, D5, 53, a former dim sum head chef of Restaurant C, is charged with one count of agent accepting an advantage.

The charge alleges that on a day in May 2009, D5 accepted from D1 a $500 laisee as an inducement for placing food orders with Company B.

During the course of investigation, the management of all the above restaurants rendered full cooperation to the ICAC.

All defendants have been granted ICAC bail, pending their court appearance on Monday (March 8).