A Chief Building Services Engineer of the Housing Department (HD) was today (Thursday) charged by the ICAC with allegedly accepting $3.36 million in bribes and misconduct in public office in relation to the management of building services contracts and wo rks supervision at a number of Housing Authority (HA) housing projects.

Chan Kau-tai, 57, will appear at Eastern Magistracy at 9:30 am next Tuesday (April 2, 2002) .

The case originated from a referral by the HD, which rendered full assistance to the ICAC in its investigation.

Chan faces a total of 16 counts of bribery offences and one count of misconduct in public office.

Fourteen of the charges allege Chan of accepting and conspiring to accept $3.16 million in total from a number of HA approved contractors and suppliers for rendering them assistance in relation to business transactions with the HA and / or HD, and their p erformance of works.

Another two bribery charges, which are alternative to each other, allege Chan of accepting $200,000 from an HA supplier for assisting his son in relation to the application for a government contract engineer post.

Chan was further charged with one count of misconduct in public office, contrary to the Common Law.

The charge stated that whilst being a Chief Building Services Engineer of HD, Chan did a series of acts calculated to injure the public interest over the installation of room coolers in an HA project.

The alleged offences took place between March 1998 and August 2001.

Chan has been granted bail by the ICAC, pending his court appearance next week.