An official tendering system designed to curb anti-competitive conduct is powerless to combat engineering firms colluding to manipulate Hong Kong’s lucrative building maintenance market, a public inquiry into the city’s deadliest fire in decades has heard. Testifying on the 21st day of an independent committee’s hearing, three Urban Renewal Authority (URA) officials said on Thursday that the statutory body had neither the capacity nor the resources to combat bid-rigging linked to estates’...
This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. An independent committee investigating the deadly blaze at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court residential estate is holding its 21st day of evidential hearings on Thursday, with three witnesses from the Urban Renewal Authority set to give evidence. The first witness, URA case manager Matthew Chan Yat-ho, has said the authority was aware of the practice of bid-rigging...
The owners’ corporation of a Hong Kong housing complex devastated in the city’s deadliest fire in decades failed to convince renovation workers to use fire-resistant materials due to the absence of statutory requirements, a public inquiry heard on Friday. Tony Tsui Moon-come, chairman of the management committee of the incorporated owners of Wang Fuk Court at the time of the fire, said on Friday he and other residents were “helpless” when trying to compel contractor Prestige Construction and...
A Hong Kong man has been jailed for 11 months and fined HK$4,500 (US$574) for selling his digital wallet so it could be used by a crime syndicate to receive HK$25,500 defrauded from donors, who believed the money would be used to help victims of the Tai Po fire. West Kowloon Court heard on Thursday that Cham Shu-shing, a 32-year-old cook, had sold his Alipay account to an unknown group of scammers last year for HK$3,800, knowing it would be used for illegal purposes. A police investigation...
This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. An independent committee examining the causes of Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades, which claimed 168 lives at Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po, begins its second round of hearings on Wednesday. Chung Kit-man, director and engineer of Victory Fire Engineering, the contractor responsible for the estate’s fire service equipment, is expected to testify again on...