Commission Against Corruption, Macao SAR

Last year the CCAC received an in-person complaint indicating that a worker of the Education and Youth Development Bureau (DSEDJ) secretly controlled a youth association and allegedly defrauded over subsidies for activities from the DSEDJ through false report of the number of participants and contents of activities.

Following an investigation, the CCAC discovered that in order to evade the recusal system, the suspect registered a local youth association under the names of his wife and friends in 2017 and secretly controlled the operation of the association in his capacity as an “adviser”. Then the suspect applied for subsidies for activities to the DSEDJ many times under the name of the association or in the guise of other youth associations. Since his job is to analyse applications for the “Annual Subsidy Scheme for Activities of Youth Groups”, the public servant is familiar with the vetting and approval criteria, the assessment procedure and loopholes in supervision. He defrauded over the subsidies many times with receipts and documentary proofs forged by himself or others under his instruction through overstating the expenses and number of participants of the activities and concealing the incomes from tour fees. In addition, when analysing and examining some relevant applications, the suspect took advantage of his position to give positive opinions to his superior and suggest paying the subsidies despite that he knew the existence of document forgery and false report of expenses. After the application deadlines expired, the suspect stilled accessed the subsidy application system many times to input data in order to prepare proposals suggesting his superior approving the relevant applications. Eventually, the applications were approved. The case involved more than a dozen activities that took place inside and outside Macao and the subsidies defrauded amounted to over MOP500,000 in total.

Moreover, after knowing that the DSEDJ was conducting internal review of the applications made by the youth association involved, the suspect stole the internal assessment documents from the server of the DSEDJ and secretly gave them to the members of the association so that they could prepare for the response for questioning.

The worker of the DSEDJ has allegedly committed power abuse, unlawful economic advantage, forgery committed by public servant, computer forgery and illegitimate acquisition, use or provision of computer data. Also, the suspect and five members of the youth association involved have allegedly committed document forgery and fraud. The case has been referred to the Public Prosecutions Office for follow-up.