Kapok | Turning a blind eye

Eric Sautedé

Come on, we should be gasping for breath with this Ng Lap Seng story! Keeping abreast of the twists and turns in this unraveling saga of corruption involving no less than a former president of the UN General Assembly and our own high-flying real-estate developer turned power broker should leave us with Rugby World Cup-like sore eyes! Our fingers should be numb with the frenetic flicking of pages of juicy stories! Instead of that: not much, and less in Macao than in Hong Kong.
To be fair, the English and Portuguese press in Macao has been making a real effort regarding coverage, especially since the Investigative Reporting Program of University of California at Berkeley publicly released on September 29 the confidential “Final Report on a Discreet Due Diligence Investigation into Ng Lap Seng in Macau & Hong Kong,” a report that was commissioned by Las Vegas Sands to International Risk Limited back in 2010 and obtained by the program from a Las-Vegas court.
But what about the Chinese press, the one read by 95% of the population? Since Mr Ng was arrested on September 19, the Macau Daily News, the reference daily in Chinese, only published six bland short stories mentioning Mr Ng, the longest one of less than 700 characters (about 400 words)! Only the Shimin Daily (9 stories) and the San Wa Ou Daily (10 stories) seem to have done better, but yet again on the short side and certainly not in line with real reporting. More aggressive and pro-democrat small periodicals like Sonpou or Macau Concealers have provided more in-depth treatment, but mainly derived from the Hong Kong press and with a readership difficult to measure.
The Hong Kong-based Oriental Daily News and The Sun, both characterized as “pro-Beijing leftist” tabloids, published some 14 stories each! Next magazine, the pro-democrat weekly of the Next Media Group, ran its cover story on the case on October 15 and splashed 6 pages exposing possible collusion, conflict of interest and corruption with the previous Chief Executive. Even the Guangdong-based Southern Metropolis Daily published 2,700 characters of investigative reporting on October 9.
Now, what about the issue? Mr Ng, who is of course presumed innocent, is being charged in New York on at least three counts of conspiracy to bribe, bribery and money laundering in direct connection with a USD1.3 million bribery scheme targeted at the United Nations, and this on top of the charges of conspiracy to obstruct and false statements regarding USD4.5 million in cash that Mr Ng had personally funneled to the US since 2013.
And why does it matter? It has been oft repeated that Mr Ng represents Macao at the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the highest consultative body of the People’s Republic of China, is (was?) a member of the Economic Development Committee of the Macao SAR, a formal political entity directly under the Chief Executive, and also sits on the 400-member Electoral Committee that designates the Chief Executive. Mr Ng is on top of that a high-profile board member of numerous associations, in real estate, but also in education as well as community-based and patriotic organizations. Moreover, several publicly available records link his business operations to other prominent real-estate developers as well as the former Chief Executive and Stanley Ho. Finally, Mr Ng’s name has surfaced ever since the end of the 1990s in pretty noteworthy cases of traffic of influence and corruption, even though he was never convicted, in the US, but also Taiwan and Macao – including the Ao Man Long fiasco, according to a Next magazine report of August 2014. Unfortunately, the few “persons” who allegedly know this generous “human living Buddha” (sic) appear to be only talking to the foreign press…
On the side of officialdom, with the notable exception of Ho Iat Seng, the president of the Assembly, the response has been muted – what happens outside Macao does not concern Macao. Wasn’t the UN-sponsored South-South Cooperation conference center at the heart of the bribery scheme supposed to be built in Macao?