Lau backs charges against Batalha, citing ‘unwritten’ IPIM rule

Glória Batalha Ung

The former president and executive director of the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM), Irene Lau, has backed the allegations made by the Public Prosecution’s Office against the former executive director of IPIM, Glória Batalha Ung.
Yesterday in the Court of First Instance, Lau stated that it was forbidden for IPIM staff members to give any information to applicants before the submission of their application documents.
According to Lau, only those in charge of the department, as well as the Executive Committee of IPIM (which includes the executive directors and its president), are permitted to know the criteria used to classify the applicants’ submissions.
Questioned on the topic by both the prosecutor and several defense lawyers, Lau admitted that this rule was an “unwritten one” that formed part of IPIM’s normal practices and procedures.
According to Lau, for an IPIM staff member to provide details to applicants, “the applicant or his legal representative needed to come to IPIM in person and such meeting needed to be attended by two people from IPIM staff.” Furthermore, Lau explained that such encounters would always take place at the IPIM facilities and could never be done elsewhere or by private contact.
Lau’s words were in connection to the charges against Batalha, who is accused of breaching IPIM secrecy and abusing her powers as an executive director by assisting an applicant. The applicant is a woman named Yan Peiyu who was working as a Professor at the Macau University of Science and Technology in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
On the second day of the trial, Batalha had admitted to giving advice to Yan so she could get her residency application approved by IPIM, by suggesting that her salary was too low and that she should therefore improve her résumé and join associations in her field in Macau.
In court, Batalha claimed she believed that her actions were legal and within the scope of her powers at IPIM, and that she had believed they were in line with the government’s ambitions to attract qualified talent in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine, as expressed in the policy address of that year.
During yesterday’s session, Lau reaffirmed on several occasions that the given information was confidential. According to Lau, providing such information to applicants was illegal and not in accordance with the policies and procedures of IPIM or within the ambit of Batalha’s role as executive director.
In response to further questions from Batalha’s lawyer, Pedro Leal, Lau added that it was her understanding that, “providing detailed information on the IPIM criteria used to evaluate the applications would potentially jeopardize the process, as applicants would include false information to fulfill such requirements.”
Leal presented the counterargument that even if Batalha had offered some insight to Yan that allowed her to perfect her application, none of the documents submitted were forged and none of the information provided to IPIM was false, leading to Lau issuing a favorable opinion on Yan’s request for residency and subsequent approval.
Lau also disputed Batalha’s statement from an earlier stage of the trial that the Secretary for Economy and Finance had told IPIM’s executive committee to prioritize applications by qualified staff and encourage investment in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Yesterday in court, Lau said that the Secretary never mentioned any such advice or guidelines to her.

Applications with surprise criteria
One of the facts which the defense lawyers disputed the most was Lau’s statement regarding the need to keep application criteria secret.
“If an investor does not know how much he should invest to meet the criteria how can he apply?” questioned the defense lawyer of Jackson Chang, Álvaro Rodrigues.
He observed that the scheme states clearly that the “investment needs to be relevant to Macau SAR.” In light of this, he noted that it would be considered normal and logical for a potential investor to find out which areas of investment would be considered relevant to Macau and how much they should invest in those.
The lawyer’s comments came after Lau reiterated that to disclose the minimum amount to be invested in the case of investment projects would breach the same confidentiality rules that she said were common and accepted knowledge among all IPIM staff.
Rodrigues was also interested to know whether, when Lau took office from Chang, she noticed anything unusual in the operations of IPIM that led her to believe the former president had done something against the rules or to benefit a particular person. Lau responded that she never found anything strange or unusual in the conduct of the former president.
Questioned on who established the rule that staff at IPIM could not disclose to applicants the minimum investment amount for their investment project to be considered, Lau said, “It was the president [Chang] but through a verbal order,” admitting that such guidelines cannot be found in writing in any rulebook or internal IPIM guideline documents.
In response to another of Leal’s questions, Lau further explained why she considers Batalha’s disclosure of information to constitute a breach of confidentiality.
“[Within the executive committee of IPIM] we were given different tasks and work fields. One director should not interfere with the other director’s work unless the president gives orders otherwise.” She noted that such division of work and responsibilities had been established by Chang.
This was one of the few acknowledgments made in response to the numerous questions asked by Leal. In most cases, Lau avoided replying as much as possible, at one point asking the judge whether “the court should ask her such questions.”
The trial resumes tomorrow to continue to hear witnesses from among the IPIM staff who are related to the case.

Irene Lau