The government refused to reveal which Tsueng Kwan O project was involved in the scandal, but the district has seen some of Hong Kong’s largest public development projects in the last few years
The deputy General Manager of China Railway 15th Bureau Group Company Limited (CR15) has been charged by the ICAC in a bribery scandal involving a major government engineering works for a project in Tseung Kwan O in 2022.
According to ICAC, Xu Wenju, 40, accepted a $2 million bribe from the operator of Hanki Contractors (Hong Kong) & Associates Limited for slope and soil works subcontract under a Civil Engineering & Development Department (CEDD) site formation project.
Xu then recommended Hanki to the project management committee and offered advice and assistance to Hanki during the tendering exercise.
However, Hanki was not, in the end, the lowest bidder and was not awarded the contract.
ICAC yesterday (3 September) arrested Xu and his Hanki accomplice, Ng Koon-shing, 60, charging them both with one count of conspiracy for an agent to accept an advantage, contrary to section 9(1)(a) of the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance.
The pair will appear in Eastern Magistrates’ Courts tomorrow, where the prosecution will apply for transferring the case to the District Court for plea.
CEDD refused to divulge which works project the scandal involved. The secretive department is known for hiding contractor information from the public through elaborate joint venture arrangements, while, since its own concrete testing and slope safety scandals emerged in the 2020s, has begun regularly deleting contract tender information from its website.
In fact, CEDD offers no public information on contracts awarded earlier than April 2024, and a search for CR15, by its initials or full name, yielded no results on CEDD’s website despite the firm being a major player in Hong Kong development.
CR15 is one of around 25 subsidiaries of China Railway Construction Corporation Limited, and among five subsidiaries apparently active in Hong Kong and, according to Development Bureau, allowed to bid for projects greater than $400 million in value.
The firm has projects ranging from trackside maintenance for Hong Kong’as MTR to building roads in Tanzania as part of the One Belt One Road initiative.