Charges brought against 19 Hong Kong laboratory staff over faked bridge concrete tests
ICAC says workers at Jacobs China Limited face a joint charge of conspiracy to defraud
Hong Kong’s anti-corruption watchdog on Wednesday charged 19 laboratory staff working for a government contractor over faking concrete test reports for the multibillion-dollar bridge that will link the city to Zhuhai and Macau.
The suspects – a senior site laboratory technician, 13 technicians and five assistants – were responsible for conducting construction material compliance tests, including concrete compression tests, according to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
They were hired by Jacobs China Limited (JCL) – a contractor for the Civil Engineering and Development Department (CEDD) – and mainly worked at the Siu Ho Wan Public Works Regional Laboratory. The lab was set up by the department in late 2012 to meet the increased demand for compression tests on concrete samples for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.
All concrete samples were required to pass the tests within a set period of time.
Hong Kong officials not suspected over fake concrete tests on bridge, graft-buster says
The ICAC said 18 of the staff members faced a joint charge of conspiracy to defraud as they allegedly changed the time of the computers or replaced the original concrete sample cubes to falsify the tests between January 2013 and July 2016.
“They were alleged to have dishonestly altered the date and/or the time of the computers connected to the compression machines in the laboratory,” the graft-buster said in the statement.