Public Prosecutions Office | Avoiding public tenders continues beyond Ho

The city’s current top prosecutor, Ip Son Sang, was accused Friday of allegedly granting public service contracts without putting them to public tender. The accusation was made by a witness in the trial of former top prosecutor Ho Chio Meng, who is defending charges of the same nature.

In Friday’s session of the trial, witness Man Hio U was called to the stand to testify. She was the head of the Public Prosecutions Office’s (MP) Personnel and Finance Department between 2001 and 2010 and now works as a consultant for the MP.

Man accused current top prosecutor Ip of continuing the malpractice that led to Ho’s arrest.

Ho is charged with granting public service contracts to shelf companies run by the former top prosecutor and his connections and of standing to profit from those arrangements. He managed to circumvent the legal requirements for public tenders by slicing large contracts into smaller deals that could be settled without due process.

According to a report by public broadcaster TDM, the witness on Friday claimed that one such contract, authorized by Ip, was worth over MOP2 million, but was split into two parts so that the process of a public tender was not required.

The said contract was signed in July 2015, when Ip was already the top prosecutor.

As a result, Ip has now been called to testify at the Court of Final Instance, either through physical presence or in a written testimony.

Defending the allegations made, Ho’s lawyers claimed on Friday that issues of safety and confidentiality had been the driver behind the decision to split contracts rather than put them to public tender. They said that the decision was not influenced by corruption or the potential for personal gain in either of the Ho or Ip cases.