The
"Hui Hon Trio" |
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The Yuen Chau Kok short piling scam
mainly involved three people who quickly became known
as the "Hui Hon Trio"-
two ex-directors
of Hui Hon together with the site agent
who was responsible for overseeing the Yuen Chau Kok foundation
works on behalf of Hui Hon.
During interrogation, the site agent put forward the defence
that he was only acting upon his bosses' instructions;
his bosses had insisted on a particular method to construct
the piles and he had simply asked the workers to carry
out their orders.
The two Hui Hon ex-directors
denied that they knew about or had taken part in the scam.
One of them claimed he was mainly responsible for marketing
and seldom carried out site inspections. He did admit
that he had purchased and used Super Mud to deal with
soil collapses in the piling shafts, but said that he
believed his subordinate, the site agent, must first have
obtained HD's approval. He said that no site staff had
ever reported to him that some of the temporary casings
had not reached the founding level. The other ex-director
claimed that his job was mainly to collect payments and
pitch for new business; he seldom visited construction
sites.
They both denied having instructed site staff to drill
boreholes without installing the temporary casings. ICAC's
Mr Leung recollects, "Up to this point in the investigation,
there was still no evidence to prove that these two ex-directors
of Hui Hon and the site agent had entered into a definite
or verbal agreement to build short piles in the project."
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