The Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) has completed an investigation into the recent complaints against the Policy Research and Regional Development Bureau (DSEPDR) and its director, and will release a report in due course.
On Friday, CCAC Commissioner André Cheong Weng Chon said he was reviewing the contents of the report and preparing a press release to provide an explanation to the public. It is expected that the results of the investigation will be announced by the end of this month.
In July, the director of the DSEPDR, Mi Jian, was accused of committing 11 types of misconduct. The accusation was made in the form of a complaint letter sent to the CCAC by “a group of DSEPDR workers.”
The authors of the letter claim that Mi had admitted several doctorate candidates into the bureau to work without going through the central recruitment procedures. Normally, government recruitment is done publicly under certain criteria. The complainants accuse Mi of nepotism.
Mi was also accused of having terminated local employment contracts and having reserved positions for his students by emptying certain managerial positions.
The bureau head was accused of having divided research projects into small parts, each costing less than MOP500,000, in order to bypass the legal requirement to open a public tender.
He was also reported to have regularly smoked in his indoor office space. The letter stated that reports had been made to the Health Bureau but no obvious follow-up action was seen.
Afterwards, Mi issued a statement to deny the accusations. His bureau held internal meetings and issued a statement about its conclusion that the complaint had not originated from the DSEPDR.
As the complaint was made publicly, the CCAC responded quickly. Cheong has said to the media that the CCAC is handling the case in accordance with the established working procedures, assuring the public that Mi’s statement would not affect the commission’s impartiality.
The DSEPDR, formed by the Chief Executive to study ways to coordinate Macau’s integration into the Greater Bay Area, has been in operation for a little over one year. Anthony Lam & Julie Zhu
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