Chinese company denies bribery charge that led to arrest of Patrick Ho in US
CEFC China Energy calls charges ‘exaggerated’ and are a result of deepening ties between China and Russia
US authorities have arrested former Hong Kong home affairs minister Patrick Ho Chi-ping and an ex-foreign minister of Senegal for allegedly masterminding a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme in Africa on behalf of a top Chinese energy firm, with some deals supposedly arranged in the halls of the United Nations.
Details about the unidentified company pointed to CEFC China Energy, but the Shanghai-based rising star of China’s energy industry issued a blanket denial on Tuesday.
Ho, who had been working for a subsidiary of CEFC after he left the Hong Kong government, allegedly sent US$2.9 million (HK$22.7 million) worth of bribes to Chad’s president, Uganda’s foreign minister and co-defendant Cheikh Gadio, formerly the top Senegalese envoy.
Transparency key to market stability on both sides of border, says ex-minister Patrick Ho
Ho, 68, and Gadio, 61, are each charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering. Ho has been remanded in custody and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in jail.
United States authorities announced their arrest a day after an oil supply agreement was reached between CEFC and Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company, with two Chinese-language papers citing the Chinese firm’s representatives as suggesting the US-Russia geopolitical contest was behind the arrest.
China Energy Fund Committee, CEFC’s subsidiary NGO of which Ho was secretary general, said in a statement published in Ming Pao newspaper that America’s “exaggerated” acts over “something hypothetical” had shown that “the deepening of Sino-Russian cooperation has touched its sensitive area”.
The state-owned Global Times quoted an anonymous top officer at CEFC as saying there were “deep international political motives” behind the case, adding that Ho’s lawyer had “already denied the groundless accusation”, although Ho’s attorney, Ed Kim, of Krieger Kim & Lewin LLP, declined to comment when contacted by the Post.