Macau’s Court of First Instance where the IPIM trial is underway
An investigator from the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) yesterday tried to prove the existence of a criminal organization run by one of the defendants in the ongoing corruption case involving the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM).
At the Court of First Instance, the investigator accused the fourth defendant, Ng Kuok Sao, his wife Wu Sok Wah, as well as several staff members at One Kin Construction Company of being a part of the criminal organization.
The investigator also alleged that this underground society counted the former IPIM chief of Residency Application and Legal Affairs Division, Miguel Ian, and the former president of IPIM, Jackson Chang, among its members.
The session was marked by the intervention of the defense lawyers, namely the defense of Chang, represented by Álvaro Rodrigues, who refuted the idea that there is any criminal organization involved in this case. If there was such an organization, his client was not part of it, said Rodrigues.
Questioning the CCAC investigator, Rodrigues requested clear information on when this alleged organization was founded, who founded it and where it operated.
In reply the CCAC investigator only noted that Ng would give orders to subordinates to perform the necessary tasks to submit the applications for residency to IPIM, justifying in this way the idea of a criminal organization.
To such a response, Rodrigues argued that these instructions were simply part of a normal workplace hierarchy.
“You keep saying that Ng gave orders or instructions to his group but what you are not saying is that this ‘group’ that you are mentioning is his wife and his secretary. If he does not give these orders or instructions [as a boss] who would do so?”
On repeated insistence, the CCAC investigator dated the start of the group’s operations from 2010 or possibly earlier, citing the existence of cases handled by the group in that year.
Chang’s lawyer detailed the exact legal provisions for what constitutes a criminal organization to prove that one cannot be said to exist in the case of allegedly illicit IPIM residency applications.
Rodrigues said that, in his opinion, the CCAC could not prove the co-authorship of his client in the crimes allegedly committed as well as the collective will of all people involved in participating from the organization, as well as the stability and continuity of such operations.
“I have come to this courtroom for over one month now and in all this time I barely heard the name of my client being mentioned. Why do you say he is a member of the group?” asked Rodrigues before being interrupted by Judge Leong Fong Meng who said, “if the proof is good enough or not, that is a decision that the court will arrive at at a later stage.”
Changing strategy, the defense of Chang listed several cases of unlawful applications to IPIM mentioned by the same investigator during his testimony to the court last Friday, asking one-by-
one there was any proof of Chang’s involvement.
To all the cases mentioned, the investigator admitted that the CCAC investigation did not find any evidence of Chang’s participation or interference, leading Rodrigues to ask once more, “why does the prosecution think that my client is part of a criminal organization?”
“The only case in which my client was found to have interfered was by giving some information to his daughter [Crystal Chang, ninth defendant],” said Rodrigues. Here “we can discuss if he breached the confidentiality of his work to which he is obliged, but I think it is not a crime. Still, he is the only person in this room that is kept in preventive custody.”
Closing a long series of questions to the witness, Rodrigues showed to the court several documents handed to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) in which Chang had drawn attention to what his bureau suspected were forged documents or false statements.
The lawyer questioned the investigator on how a person that inclusively reports such cases – which also involved companies owned by Ng – can be considered a member of a hypothetical criminal organization.
In reply, the investigator noted that in such cases, Chang had “no other option” besides reporting to the MP since he already knew that IPIM was under investigation by the anti-corruption authorities.
This theory was in turn refuted by the defense lawyer, who showed that on at least two occasions, Chang had filed reports to the MP long before the investigation from the CCAC began.
According to Rodrigues, the former president of IPIM had filed a total of 65 reports to MP in the six years from 2013 to 2018. The investigator said that the CCAC investigation into IPIM had begun in late 2016, first for administrative matters and then for criminal matters.
During yesterday’s court session, the same investigator tried to prove that Miguel Ian, the chief of Residency Application and Legal Affairs Division, had been a “mentor” and a “consultant for difficult cases” for the staff of Ng, providing insight into the process and even composing documents and justification letters to be delivered to IPIM.
According to the CCAC, Ian had all the evidence of such action at his own office at the Pension Fund, including electronic files of the documents and letterhead paper from several companies of Ng.
Far more difficult is proving the advantages granted to Ian in exchange for such consultancy services. The CCAC continues to claim that “he should have been given advantages in acquiring housing units at StarTower apartment building in Hengqin,” but admits a lack of evidence to show that Ian actually made use of this advantage.
The court session resumes today with the start of the hearing of witnesses from IPIM. Among them will be former president Irene Lau, who took the helm of the institution after Chang’s removal from the post.
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