Three members of a family, charged by the ICAC for vote-rigging at the 2023 Rural Ordinary Election – Resident Representative Election for Ha Pak Nai Tsuen in Yuen Long, were today (April 3) sentenced at the Tuen Mun Magistrates’ Courts to up to two months’ imprisonment after admitting that they had voted at the election, knowing that they were not entitled to do so.

An ICAC investigation, prompted by a corruption complaint, revealed that a then property manager of a property management company had stolen minor works payments of a public housing estate and two Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) estates totalling over $11 million. The property manager was today (March 28) sentenced to 56 months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to theft at the District Court.

A then property agent was charged by the ICAC yesterday (March 26) for allegedly bribing his up-line manager for conniving at his absence from duty for months and falsifying his attendance records to defraud a property agency of salary payments totalling over $58,000. The duo were also suspected of defrauding the company of commissions by making false representation about the handling agent in a property transaction.

The Hong Kong ICAC is receiving high-level delegations from anti-corruption agencies of two Belt and Road countries, Sri Lanka and Zambia, who are in Hong Kong from Monday (March 24) for a five-day study visit programme. The ICAC shares with the delegates Hong Kong’s effective anti-graft strategies and its experience in combating corruption, systemic prevention and entrenching a probity culture to strengthen training collaboration.

A then team leader and a then construction worker of a works subcontractor, charged by the ICAC, today (March 26) received a custodial sentence and a community service order at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts respectively for soliciting and accepting bribes totalling about $98,000 from four formwork workers referred by them to work at a Community Isolation Facility construction site on Lantau Island during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ICAC Commissioner Woo Ying-ming visited the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) of Macao as well as the headquarters of the Macao Judiciary Police today (March 20) for an interchange of information on the latest anti-corruption developments and law enforcement collaboration between Hong Kong and Macao.

Two Works Supervisors of the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD) and one supplier, implicated in an ICAC bribery investigation into EMSD frontline staff, were charged on Monday (March 17). The trio were suspected of procuring the award of purchase orders in the total sum of over 13.6 million to the supplier on various occasions in a span of seven years by illicit bribery means, and inflating the number and the price of the items to be purchased. Charges of conspiracy to defraud were laid against the trio, who will appear in the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts this afternoon (March 19) for mention.

In a law enforcement operation codenamed “Arrow Shower” mounted this month, the ICAC arrested 22 individuals, including 18 frontline bank employees who had allegedly accepted bribes totalling $2 million for assisting a mortgage loan referral intermediary to defraud banks of referrals fees in over 200 applications.

The ICAC had earlier charged a number of site team leaders of a sub-contractor of the Third Runway Project of the Hong Kong International Airport (Third Runway Project) with bribery over employment of workers. One of the defendants was today sentenced to two years’ imprisonment at District Court today (March 18) for accepting bribes totalling about $700,000 from over 80 fellow workers and perverting the course of public justice. This jail term is the longest meted out by the court so far on such cases.

The ICAC today (March 17) charged a then Senior Customs Officer of the Customs and Excise Department (C&E) for allegedly using an application form containing false information to mislead the C&E that she did not perform any outside work over a span of one year. The offence was uncovered in an investigation by the ICAC, following receipt of a corruption complaint referred by the C&E.