Sunday Times 2
China Harbour foreman jailed
A China Harbour Engineering Company foreman monitoring the building of sea walls at a mega bridge project in Hong Kong has been jailed by a court for offering a casino chip bribe worth HK$ 50,000 (Rs. 858,604) to a senior works inspector of an engineering consultancy.
The man, a senior foreman of China Harbour, peddled the gambling temptation twice to a senior works inspector of independent consultancy Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong, to buy his favor into accepting second-rate rock fill (sand and stones) material for sea walls being built by the Chinese company. The unsuitable rock fill was supplied by a company contracted by China Harbour.
Ove Arup is an independent consultant appointed by the Highways Department to supervise the work of China Harbour on a bridge connecting Hong Kong, the southern Chinese city Zhuhai, and Macau, the world’s biggest casino town.
The 42-kilometre sea crossing with a dual three-lane carriageway costs HK$132.9 billion-plus (Rs 2.2 trillion). This cost is more than Sri Lanka’s entire budget expenditure presented by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe Government.
China Harbour is the prime mover in the so-called Colombo Port City, which in reality is an ocean-front luxury real estate development through which it could rake in billions of dollars by selling premium sea-front property to foreign investors.
The former senior foreman of the company Lee Shu-shan, 44, was found guilty of two counts of offering an advantage to an agent, in contravention of Section 9(2)(a) of the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance and jailed for 15 months on Monday by a magistrate.
Lee was prosecuted by the feared and respected Independent Commission Against Corruption. He had pleaded not guilty.
Bail was rejected pending an appeal by the convicted former foreman, the anti-graft agency announced.
The magistrate said a custodial sentence was appropriate because of serious bribery offences at a major infrastructure project in Hong Kong.
China Harbour secured a contract to build seawalls that are formed by large cylindrical steel columns. These columns are filled with materials, including sand and stones known as rock fills. The columns were the boundary of the foundation to an artificial island.
Specifications of the rock fills were stipulated in the contract. If the materials did not meet contract specifications, Over Arup would reject the shipment from China. The supplier then had to bear the cost of transport and additional shipments.
Since 2012, China Harbour had engaged Win Sino Engineering, to supply the rock fills, the court was told.
On October 15, 2013, the China Harbour senior foreman was alerted by a senior works inspector of Ove Arup that three loads of sub-standard rock fills supplied by China Harbour contractor Win Sino had been detected.
The next day, China Harbour senior foreman Lee approached the Ove Arup works inspector in his office and offered a chip worth HK$50,000 from a Macau casino. Such tokens are used for placing bets at a casino that issued it.
China Harbour senior foreman Lee sought the works inspector’s help to look into the matter of inferior rock fill that had been delivered. The works inspector rejected his overture.
Six days later, China Harbour senior foreman Lee again visited the Ove Arup works inspector in his office and placed the casino chip under a document tray. Once more, his bribe was rejected.
Then the China Harbour senior foreman Lee tempted the works supervisor to accompany him to Macau, the gambling haven. This tactic, too, failed.
The ant-graft agency said China Harbour and Ove Arup “rendered full assistance”, during the bribery investigation.