Commission Against Corruption, Macao SAR

In adherence with the principle of legality, in 2019, the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) remained focused on the policy stressing both suppression and prevention of corruption and fulfilled this mission effectively. On the front of corruption fighting, it combated corrupt practices in public and private sectors with determination, pragmatism and perseverance. On the front of ombudsman, it earnestly oversaw the operation of public departments, kept a close eye on the issues that caught society's attention in particular, promptly addressed the illegal or irregular acts it had found and rendered remedial suggestions. At the same time, the CCAC actively participated in the review of implementation of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, had its staff's professional skills upgraded by sending them to attend international and regional conferences and training activities, kept on carrying out various kinds of activities to promote integrity and expanded its network of community relations in order to gain public support for integrity building.

Whilst Macao marked the 20^th anniversary of its handover to China, the CCAC adheres to the concept of governance of the 5^th term Government of the Macao SAR - "Unity and Efforts, Change and Innovation", so that it will carefully plan the directions of long-term development of integrity building, strengthen public servants' awareness of discipline and law-abidingness and keep on disseminating the message of integrity in the general public. At the same time, the CCAC will strive to explore the expansion of connection and communication with the Commission of Audit in terms of the duties as the watchdogs, follow up citizens' complaints over public departments in strict compliance with the law and call the public servants who have violated the discipline and law into account and bring them to justice in order to safeguard and enhance the image of integrity and justice of the Macao SAR Government. In addition, the CCAC will strive to optimise its organisation, operation and staffing in order to ensure that the duties conferred by law are fully performed.

In response to President Xi Jinping's expectation and requirement for the Macao SAR as he has revealed on different occasions, the CCAC will shoulder its unshirkable responsibility to promote clean practice in the public service. Concerning President Xi's advice to public servants about behaviour – "be self-disciplined when being alone, be careful in the very beginning and be prudent to every detail", the CCAC will, through making new plans in 2020, instill into all public servants and citizens the importance to keep a watchful eye on the possibilities of occurrence of illegality and even on trivial matters when they are alone without any supervision. In this sense, corruption may be eradicated when their awareness of integrity and morality are strengthened.

I. Directions of Long-term development of integrity building

1. To Act with Virtue, to Live with Integrity: Through continuous promotion and education approaches, the CCAC will strengthen its efforts in launching long-term promotion plans, namely "All for Integrity", medium-term plans, namely one which encourages non-anonymous complaints, as well as regular short-term promotional activities targeting public servants, commercial sectors, the general public and students on topics related to awareness of integrity including corruption prevention, fair business environment and honesty, with an aim to gradually apply the guiding advice of national leaders to citizens' awareness and actions about integrity. Therefore, the CCAC's policies in 2020 will focus on publicity and education, inter-departmental cooperation and active intervention, which will be the main directions of development of integrity building. It will strive to enhance the image of the Macao SAR Government and instill the awareness of integrity and morality into the daily life and minds of public servants and citizens.
2. Real-name Reporting and Strict Supervision: Concerning its duty to supervise the legality, fairness and efficiency of public administration in the aspects closely related to livelihood, the CCAC will enhance the rigour of the procedures of handling administrative complaints and the effectiveness of the follow-up work, review the system of handling anonymous complaints, promote inter-departmental cooperation, establish mechanisms of unified recommendation mechanism and retrospective reviews and review the "Joint Integrity Building Plan". Moreover, the CCAC will fully exert its function of supervision and will report its works to the general public in a timely manner in order to boost the transparency and clear citizens' doubts in a down-to-earth manner.
3. All-out Efforts in Corruption Fighting and Establishment of Respective Mechanisms: Regarding the force of corruption fighting, the CCAC will spare no effort as always in the enhancement of transparency of the government, draw on its experience and actively communicate with other public departments in order to encourage them to set up forward-looking measures to prevent corruption. We expect that in 2020, through enhancement of communication and mutual trust with the Chinese mainland and various countries and regions, the CCAC expects to establish mutual assistance mechanisms on a regular or case-by-case basis regarding corruption prevention, law enforcement and recovery of fugitives and crime proceeds.
4. Internal Communication and External Connection: Regarding the exchange and cooperation with other countries and regions, the CCAC will actively cooperate in the assessment of implementation of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption led by experts from the United Nations and keep on dispatching representatives to various meetings and training activities organised by international and regional organisations in order to ensure that the measures and strategies of integrity building of Macao will be geared to international standards. In addition, the CCAC will maintain close contact with the National Supervisory Commission. Under the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area policy, the CCAC will strengthen the regional exchange and cooperation with different provinces and cities of the Chinese mainland and actively upgrade and broaden the technical knowledge and vision of its staff.

II. Optimising the organisation, operation and staffing of CCAC

The current number of investigators of the CCAC is less than 75% of the legal limit of its investigative staff. There are only 13 investigators working with the Ombudsman Bureau, which shall process around 500 complaints every year. Facing the serious shortage of the main human resources responsible for investigation, the CCAC urgently needs to launch an open recruitment process for hiring investigators in 2020 in order to ensure that the duties conferred upon by the law are carried out effectively.

In addition, the CCAC will further strengthen the stability, quality and capability of its staff and enhance their national awareness as well as actively reinforce its reserves of manpower in order to fulfil its statutory missions. Therefore, the CCAC will constantly review and study the regime of its organisation, operation and recruitment and promotion of staff and will try the best to commence the research on the first draft respective legislative proposals in the latter half of 2020.

Policy Address of Year 2020

I. Publicity, education and community relations

The anti-corruption policies will focus on promotion and education in order to achieve the effect of prevention, as the saying goes, "prevention is better than cure".

The concepts of publicity and education are:

1. To disseminate the concept and awareness of "integrity and honesty" among all citizens; carry out education and promotion actions for young people in different age groups in primary and secondary schools and tertiary education institutes.
2. Under the policy of "initiation by the Government and participation by all", the CCAC will closely cooperate with various civil associations, schools and public departments to promote integrity.
3. Due to the diversity of methods of transmitting information, the CCAC will strengthen the education and promotion actions through multi-media and launch various innovative activities.

In order to implement the concepts mentioned above, the CCAC has formulated long-term, medium-term and short-term plans of publicity and education for the upcoming five years in order to strengthen the awareness and atmosphere of integrity and honesty in the entire city through incentives that embraces positivity such as encouragement and praise.

(1) Long-term plans for the upcoming 5 years

■ "All for Integrity"

The project mainly comprises a series of creative contests on different themes and in different ways. The winners will be selected by jury panels comprising members of the Government and personalities in society. With the initiation of the Government and the participation of all citizens, not only the awareness of integrity of every strata of society will be strengthened, but also the image of the Macao SAR Government regarding integrity in the international stage will be enhanced. In addition, the values of integrity, honesty and corruption fighting will be continuously promoted through exhibitions of works in the contests so that the public will always be alerted.

The targets (participants) will be divided in the following groups:

• Public servants: The focus of publicity and education is to disseminate the concept and scope of definition of public servant provided by Article 336 of the Penal Code among citizens.
• Legal persons in the private sector: the main purpose is to publicise the responsibilities and personal duties of legal persons provided by Law no. 10/2014, Prevention and Suppression of Bribery in External Trade.
• Workers in the private sector: the main purpose is to promote the responsibilities and personal duties of individuals provided by Law no. 19/2009, Prevention and Suppression of Bribery in the Private Sector.
• All citizens of Macao before the election period in 2021: the main purpose is to publicise the provisions under the Electoral Regime of the Legislative Assembly and the Voter Registration Law.

(2) Medium-term plans for the upcoming 2 to 3 years

Through publicity and education, efforts will be made to strengthen citizens' confidence in the regime of confidentiality of the CCAC and encourage them to file non-anonymous reports and complaints. Therefore, the CCAC will upgrade its internal computer system and website, optimise the data integration and trace the anonymous complaints which were archived or deemed invalid due to insufficient data. Meanwhile, the CCAC will adopt various approaches to disseminate the message that it will only give concrete response to the complainants who are willing to provide their names and addresses.

On the new website of the CCAC to be launched in the latter half of this year, the function of making online appointment to file an in-person complaint will be introduced in order to make it easier for citizens and encourage them to file a complaint in person.

In the course of investigation into complaints, if there are praiseworthy public servants (e.g. those who have strictly fulfilled their obligation of self-recusal), the CCAC will notify the public departments they work with in order to enhance all public departments' and public servants' understanding of the importance of integrity and the sense of achievement in a positive manner.

(3) Short-term plans

Regular promotion activities in the community and schools will be continued. The targets of seminars on integrity will include principal officials of the Government and directors and chiefs of public departments so as to implement the Chief Executive's concept of governance about strengthening the accountability of officials.

In order to execute the plans mentioned above, the CCAC will make main efforts in carrying out the following works:

(a) To reinforce the promotion in schools

Through holding the lesson plan design collection activity, the CCAC seeks to encourage educators to develop teaching materials on integrity suitable for kindergarten and primary and secondary school students by drawing on their own teaching experience and make education on integrity more diversified in combination with the multimedia resources available on the "database of education on integrity". At the same time, through recruitment of young ambassadors of honesty, the CCAC aims to encourage students to take the initiative to carry out promotion and education activities on honesty in their schools in order to foster a new generation who are incorruptible, law-abiding and responsible.

(b) To strengthen the Integrity Volunteer Team

From different strata of society, members of the Integrity Volunteer Team spend their spare time and make use of their own skills to assist the CCAC in various promotion and education activities. In order to enlarge and strengthen the team, in 2020, the CCAC will, for the first time ever, recruit parent-child volunteer groups so as to broaden the age range of the team and integrate parent-child education on integrity into the voluntary activities, aiming to further instill awareness of integrity in every corner of society.

(c) To carry out the activities to promote integrity and honesty through AI technologies

The CCAC will make use of the latest information technologies and the ways of receiving information widely adopted by the public in order to further disseminate awareness of integrity in a more interactive way. In addition, the CCAC will launch a website about integrity specially for public servants in order to enable them to understand the information about integrity related to themselves and thus enhance their awareness of probity and integrity.

II. The Ombudsman's work

1. Improving case procedures and standardising case notification process

The CCAC will review and improve the procedures for ombudsman cases in order to make them more standardised. At present, the CCAC makes responses to complainants by emails or phone calls. Public friendly as the approach is, the responses are less formal and lack of legal validity as well as binding effect.

2. Reviewing the system of handling anonymous complaints

To strike a balance between resources management and substantial justice, the CCAC encourages residents to lodge complaints under their real names and to provide as much concrete information as possible. Otherwise, the CCAC may not be able to commence investigation due to insufficient information and cases may simply be filed. Therefore, the CCAC will publish the data related to unsuccessful investigations arising from anonymous complaints and avoid carrying out excessive investigations of the complained against, so that the resources of the SAR Government are actually used on problems that need solving.

Therefore, it is necessary to require complainants to provide their real mailing address, so that the CCAC may give appropriate and necessary notification of the progress or result of investigation by letter, and the legitimate requests of residents may be responded to directly and effectively.

3. Establishing cooperation mechanisms with other public departments

The CCAC will study the possibility of establishing a regular cooperation mechanism with the Commission of Audit for cases of public concern. It expects that it may, even in the absence of concrete complaints, develop proactive integrity policies in the future through regular inter-departmental cooperation mechanisms to address the public concern over administrative impropriety and corruption.

4. Promoting inter-departmental cooperation relations to immediately alleviate residents' grievances

For cases needing inter-departmental cooperation, the CCAC will submit reports and suggestions to the Chief Executive upon in-depth analysis for considering and deciding on the immediate coordination measures to be taken, aiming to increase transparency and efficiency of public administration and address residents' concerns in a timely manner.

5. Fully implementing the supervision duty of the CCAC

1. Developing a unified recommendation mechanism: When it comes to communication with and supervision over other departments, in addition to following up and studying specific cases as well as putting forward recommendations, the CCAC will, from 2020, compile and keep track of the information of the administrative complaints received every year. It will take the initiative to notify the department complained against and make unified recommendations where appropriate. It will also request the department concerned to provide information on the measures adopted or to be adopted when necessary and to report on whether or not disciplinary procedures have been initiated to pursue the responsibilities of its personnel.
2. Carrying out retrospective reviews: Starting from 2020, the CCAC will carry out retrospective reviews in order to, for at least two times, follow up and track the government departments or entities that once received recommendations or suggestions from the CCAC, so that the CCAC may better understand the response and conduct of those departments in response to its previous findings or recommendations on improvement measures. It will also review the efforts made to improve specific issues and whether or not these departments have made continuous efforts to meet the expectations of the public and society.
3. Reviewing the effectiveness of the "Joint Integrity Building Plan": In the past, the CCAC implemented the "Joint Integrity Building Plan" to enhance cooperation with public departments. For this purpose, an independent working group was created for implementing the Plan and developing the recusal regime. In order to raise the awareness of integrity of their personnel, those public departments have sought technical assistance from the CCAC.

Following the implementation for some years, the CCAC will review, in 2020, the current situation of the public departments that have been implementing the Plan. It will also carry out systematic classification in order to facilitate the review of the current situation of implementation of the Plan and check whether the steps taken by the public departments are adequate and effective or whether they need to be further enhanced. It will prepare the respective reports for publication purposes, which aims to raise the level of transparency and integrity of the SAR Government.

When human resources and other conditions permit, the CCAC will also prepare a report on the operation of public departments or entities and on some specific cases. Based on the statistical data, the CCAC will carry out inspection, analyses and studies on public departments that have been targets of complaints or on public administrative issues of the greatest concern to the society, including the vetting and approval criteria and supervision for the opening of public works tenders, vetting, approval and issuance of public and private works licenses and the possible administrative impropriety or irregular acts related to land issues.

III. The anti-corruption work

1. The CCAC will actively cooperate with the Macao SAR Government in promoting the policy of "enhancing integrity building and increasing the efficiency of the Public Administration". When public servants violate the law, the CCAC will carry out investigation with the utmost seriousness. In order to safeguard the image of probity of the Public Administration of the Macao SAR, the CCAC will continue to adopt a "zero tolerance" policy towards acts of corruption within the public departments.

The CCAC will also continue to fight against different types of corruption crimes in the private sector to ensure a fair and clean business environment in Macao.

2. After reviewing the issues detected in certain types of similar cases that take place frequently, the CCAC will conduct a study on the corruption prevention system with the relevant public departments. The CCAC also plans to communicate with different fund management entities and the newly-created Public Assets Supervision Planning Office in order to actively study the measures for preventing corruption related to government grants application. For large-scale infrastructural projects and public housing construction projects to be carried out shortly, the CCAC will also conduct a prospective study on the corruption prevention measures.
3. Driven by the development plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the CCAC needs to maintain cooperation and communication with the Chinese mainland and its neighbouring regions. In 2020, the CCAC plans to cooperate and exchange views with the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong in anti-corruption work, especially with the National Supervision Commission and the supervision commissions of other regions, seeking to create a general framework for mutual case assistance or initiate cross-border cooperation in anti-corruption cases at a regional level.
4. Given Macao is a small region with a high population density and a great international population mobility as well as the growing internationalisation of corruption crime, the CCAC will actively develop external cooperation and exchanges, continue to maintain positive cooperation relationship with anti-corruption agencies from across the world and actively participate in the pragmatic exchange activities in the field of corruption prevention. With regard to concrete matters such as personnel training, intelligence exchange and mutual case assistance, the CCAC will maintain close communication and effective cooperation with other places.

Based on the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the CCAC will strengthen international and regional cooperation and exchanges. As a region where the United Nations Convention Against Corruption applies, the SAR Government and the CCAC actively participate in the international and regional cooperation mechanisms established under the Convention so as to step up efforts in carrying out corruption prevention measures in the region. In addition to proactively supporting the implementation review work guided by experts from the United Nations, the CCAC also takes the opportunity to review the defects in the corruption prevention and control mechanism of Macao and promote the respective improvement measures in response to the suggestions put forward by the experts.

IV. External Cooperation and Exchanges

1. Under the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area policy, in 2020, CCAC will develop cooperation and exchanges with the National Supervision Commission and the counterparts of different regions of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, deepen the exchanges in the work of anti-corruption and ombudsman and contribute to the joint development of a clean environment for both Macao and China.
2. The CCAC will actively participate in international and regional meetings and strengthen cooperation and communication in training programmes on the work of anti-corruption and ombudsman with the Chinese mainland and other countries or regions. It expects that the personnel of the CCAC always keep abreast with the times and are equipped with the latest knowledge of graft fighting and the relevant technologies. It also aims to enhance communication and cooperation with the counterparts.
3. The CCAC will actively cooperate in the assessment of implementation of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption led by experts from the United Nations and keep on dispatching representatives to various meetings and training activities organised by international and regional organisations in order to ensure that the measures and strategies of integrity building of Macao will be geared to international standards.

V. Optimising the organisation, operation and staffing

The current number of investigators of the CCAC is less than 75% of the legal limit of its investigative staff. The Ombudsman Bureau has only 13 investigators who have to handle almost 500 complaints and reports each year. Therefore, there is a serious shortage of the main human resources responsible for investigations.

In order to improve its organisation, the CCAC will, in 2020, draw up short-term, medium-term and long-term plans to increase necessary manpower and training, improve the quality of personnel and optimise its organisation and operation.

1. Short-term plans

In order to prevent and suppress corruption in the public and private sectors, perform ombudsman functions, defend and promote the rights, freedoms, safeguards and legitimate interests of residents and ensure legality in the exercise of public powers as well as the fairness and efficiency of public administration, the CCAC will carry out an open recruitment processes for investigators in 2020, thus ensuring that the CCAC's statutory powers are effectively exercised.

2. Medium-term plans

The medium-term plan will mainly focus on strengthening staff training in several aspects. The investigators of the CCAC researchers are, in general, dedicated to their work and also have expectations on raising their capability and quality of work. In addition to general exchanges, they also seek to learn more about the investigative techniques in the field of anti-corruption and acquire the legal knowledge of litigation procedures. Therefore, the CCAC will, from 2020, actively organise internal training, update the investigators' knowledge in a timely manner and rectify any procedural oversight during case investigations. When conditions permit, professional training on law, computer forensics and forensic accounting, among others, will be organised to heighten and update the level of legal and professional knowledge of the personnel, so that they may cope with corruption crime that becomes increasingly professional and smart. As such, professionals in the relevant fields in Macao or from other regions will be invited to conduct courses or seminars in the future.

In addition, under the strict adherence to the "one country, two systems" principle, the CCAC will give priority to strengthening communication with the counterparts in the Chinese mainland and organising training courses on national issues in stages for its personnel.

3. Long-term plans

Subject to Law no. 10/2000 (Organic Law of the Commission Against Corruption) and Administrative Regulation no. 3/2009 (Organisation and Operation of the Service of the Commission against Corruption), the career of the investigation personnel of the CCAC is equivalent to that of the criminal investigation personnel of the Judiciary Police. As the legislative process regarding the revision of the Regime of the Special Careers of the Judiciary Police is in the final stage, the amendments involved will inevitably lead to changes in the career of CCAC's investigation personnel.

Also, the CCAC will review and study its organisation, operation and personnel recruitment and promotion regimes. It will also analyse and compare the different forms of connection with the Public Administration in terms of their characteristics, advantages and disadvantages and will, in particular, review whether the application of the career regime for the personnel of the Judiciary Police to the CCAC's investigation personnel should be maintained or whether an independent career regime shall be applied. Regarding the forms of connection with the Public Administration, it will also consider, among other proposals, the feasibility of changing the fixed-term appointment to permanent tenure after the former is adopted for a certain period of time, so as to better meet the actual operation needs of the CCAC.

In addition, taking into account that the corruption crime committed by workers of various entities in both the public and private sectors are mostly concealed, the lack of adequate legal regimes always hampers investigations and evidence search. Moreover, given the rapid development of technologies and the Internet, it is necessary to take account of the special needs in the investigations and conduct carried out by the CCAC and improve the technology for decrypting the information equipment or systems of the offenders. Only in this way will the CCAC be able to keep abreast with the times and successfully achieve the objective of fighting illegal acts of corruption.

To this end, in the second half of 2020, the CCAC will focus on the review and legislative process of the Organic Law of the Commission Against Corruption, Organisation and Operation of the Service of the Commission Against Corruption and Law of Special Career of Investigation Personnel of the Commission Against Corruption and seek to present the preliminary version of the respective proposals for the laws within the year.

Both public servants and the general public should understand that greed and poverty are interrelated and so are honesty and integrity. Therefore, we must always be righteous and act with integrity. This is the only way we may promote goodness and denounce vice and thus build a clean society without obstacles.

To uphold the policy vision of the Chief Executive and follow the profound guiding ideology of President Xi Jinping, the CCAC will strive to demonstrate an innovative spirit by proposing the building of a righteous image of the Macao SAR led by members of the Government and encouraging directors and chiefs to participate in integrity education and training, who will serve as an example for their subordinate services, personnel of all levels and citizens from all sectors and make them understand and value integrity. The CCAC hopes that Macao will transform itself into a society where people have a sense of integrity and act with it.

Ambitious as it is, the CCAC will always maintain a pragmatic attitude. In addition to implementing the education policies for building a graft-free society, the CCAC will give priority to the strengthening of communication and cooperation. It will punish offenders in a resolute and unyielding manner. Whether it be administrative impropriety, injustice or corruption-related crime, the CCAC will carry out investigation according to the law and hold any offender responsible.