The annual construction volume of Hong Kong’s construction industry exceeds HK$200 billion. The construction costs are huge, the procedures are complicated, and the risk of corruption is also high. The ICAC received 174 cases last year, an increase of 59% over the previous year and an increase of 20% over 2019. Four.
Fok Kwong-man, Assistant Director of the Corruption Prevention Division of the ICAC, said that corruption risks in the construction industry involve many areas, such as contract awarding, worker recruitment, disbursement of project payments and project supervision. In the first eight months of this year, 79 cases of corruption in the industry have been received. complaint. He gave an example of a case that had been sentenced earlier. The owner appointed a project manager to bid for a hotel project worth HK$100 million, but the manager did not declare his close relationship with one of the bidding companies. Because the company failed to win the bid, the manager used the Influenced to lobby the owners to transfer some of the projects to engineering companies with good relations with them, involving 23 million yuan. Huo Guangwen pointed out that the manager involved in the case failed to declare conflicts of interest and favored bidders, which was a serious breach of integrity, and was eventually sentenced to 39 months in prison for conspiracy to defraud.
Internal improvement of integrity management to prevent micro-duplication
Corruption works may endanger public safety. Although the government and relevant departments will supervise at present, the ICAC hopes that the industry can improve the integrity management from the inside to “prevent it before it happens”, so it has produced a set of “Integrity Management System” IMS, which includes three elements : Integrity policy, integrity training and integrity risk management to assist construction companies in improving their corruption prevention capabilities in a systematic way. At present, integrity policy and integrity training have been incorporated into the registration requirements for public works contractors. Integrity Risk Management IRM was launched in April this year and is temporarily voluntary.
In order to encourage more construction companies to participate in IRM, the Corruption Prevention Division has formulated 4 sets of lazy kits, covering procurement by quotation, tender procurement, corporate integrity and governance, and employee management, and provides regarding 100 control measures for construction companies’ reference. Construction companies can follow the 4 steps of the lazy bag, including risk identification, risk assessment, control and mitigation, and monitoring and review, to review the integrity risks that their company is facing and the control measures that should be taken. In addition, the Department plans to launch the fifth set of IRM slack kits for the recruitment of workers in the industry next year to help the industry plug the corruption loopholes.
Originally published on AM730 https://www.am730.com.hk/local/corruption complaints in the construction industry rise 59 – the ICAC makes lazy people help the industry to prevent corruption/341409?utm_source=yahoorss&utm_medium=referral
