Macau authorities today (Monday) announced that they were investigating a case of alleged corruption in the awarding of university construction contracts, with the main suspect thought to have received kickbacks for projects valued at MOP220 million (US$27.4 million).
In a statement, the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) said that the case involved at least five people, one of them being an administrative officer of the University of Macau, who is alleged to have assisted a contractor in bidding for the construction of residential colleges and falsified documents.
The suspect was allegedly “personally involved in some of the bid evaluation work, and the contractor won the contract.
“After that, a newly established engineering company, in which the administrative officer had a stake, obtained the award of some construction projects from the contractor as a condition of payment”, amounting to about MOP220 million, it added.
The complaint came from the higher education institution itself.
During the investigation, the CCAC found out that “in the whole process of awarding the contract for the construction of the residential colleges, the suspect participated specifically in the work related to the project initiation proposal, tendering and bid evaluation, but he never declared or asked the University of Macau for an excuse.”
The CCAC also stated that “the suspect knew the internal budget value well, […] suggested the contractor involved to fix an amount close to the budget [and] personally helped the contractor to prepare the tender documents and falsified information about the experiences of the contractor in two educational institution construction works”.
The administrative officer in question “also participated in the construction work [and] in return … the contractor awarded part of the work to a newly established company, in which the suspect had a shareholding, specially created” for the purpose of the contract.
During the investigation, the CCAC said, it also discovered that the suspect had illicitly disclosed confidential data of other construction works of the University of Macau to another engineering company to help it secure other contracts.
The case has been referred to Macau’s Public Prosecutions Office (MP).
The administrative officer and two other partners of his company are suspected of crimes of receiving bribes for committing an illegal act and forgery of documents.
Two officials at the contractor involved are suspected of the crimes of bribery and document forgery.
