Courts | Chan Ka Fai admits illegalities on MP’s accounts

The trial of the former Public Prosecutions Office (MP) Prosecutor-General, Ho Chio Meng, resumed yesterday in a session exclusively devoted to hearing the witness Chan Ka Fai, former chief of the Group of General Administration of the MP.

In a hearing lasting all day, a range of topics were addressed with the witness revealing, among other things, some “accounts juggling” procedures, as well as quotation changes and resorting to fake invoicing at the MP.

Chan was questioned by the prosecution about the specific case of a trip to Denmark for the Magistrate’s Annual Meeting made by Ho in 2005 together with other family and MP members, which resulted in a hefty bill of over MOP500,000.

In reference to the document, Chan replied that since, at the time, “the MP’s budget for that kind of activity only had a remaining balance of about MOP280,000… We paid that amount that was about half of the bill and decided to move the remaining to the next year [2006].” “For the remainder of the payment, this was done in six installments since it was quite a high amount.”

In order to justify those installments and, as Chan mentioned, “since we can’t count an activity that already occurred in the past, we had to ‘come up with’ some activities [which were in fact never done] in order to ask the travel agency for six separate invoices.”

Questioned by the prosecutors as to who knew about these “schemes” and who was the author of the plan, Chan could not answer explicitly but remarked, “I don’t know if the Chief [of the Office of the Prosecutor General] told the Prosecutor [General] but he and all the staff from the office knew about it.”

Besides the accounting irregularities admitted by Chan, the witness also explained, after being questioned by the prosecution, that there were no original receipts or invoices that could prove those trip-related costs and expenses “so we just had to trust [in them],” Chan concluded.

This, however, was not the only irregularity regarding the accounts of the MP, as in several occasions during yesterday’s hearing, Chan was asked to explain the many erasures, alterations and amendments to proposals, quotations and invoices, most of which were related to works, services or acquisitions to companies owned by Wong Kuok Wai.

Chan acknowledged that this was “common practice” within the services, stating that such amendments were, in almost all cases, suggested by the former Chief of Office of the Prosecutor General, Lai Kin Ian, most of times by the use of yellow sticky-notes that were added to the documents, sometimes with comments and or indications from several people. Chan decoded the various handwriting in the court session.

Chan also confirmed in the court session that companies run and owned by Wong would get a 5 percent (or 10 in some cases) commission on the intermediary jobs between the MP and other companies, although he mentioned that he never “really paid attention or confirmed [if the percentage was correct in any of the deals].”

Such deals were said to be verbal agreements with no documents to substantiate them.

Although he considered that in some occasions the procedure taken was not a “correct one” or “fair,” Chan mentioned that it was more a matter of convenience and trust.

Questioned if he thought the procedure to be inadequate, Chan admitted to have considered it to be so and even questioned Lai about it. However, Lai always replied in anger to such questioning which led Chan to question less and just follow orders.

Referring to both the Teachers’ Resting Room and the Cheoc Van accommodation villa, Chan said they were considered “very secret places,” saying that he never entered them and had received direct orders from Lai to “never go there without his authorization which was to be requested in advance.”

Responsible for the assets of the MP, Chan also revealed that he was aware of the sauna installed in the room of the 16th floor through the invoices but such facilities were never listed in the inventory of the MP, which Chan was required to update and send to the Finance Services Bureau (DSF).

Although the effort of the prosecution during the session was aimed to connect the actions and internal procedures with Ho, it was in fact Lai who was pointed to in most of Chan’s responses.  In reference to some cases, Chan mentioned that “I can construe that such orders should come from Ho Chio Meng but I’m not certain of that, I can only infer.”

The trial will resume tomorrow in order to hear more witnesses listed by the prosecution.