A REPORT on the 13-month investigation which triggered Wednesday's territory-wide raids on the Allied Group and associated companies will be published today. Police, working to an open-ended budget, have seconded private accountants and crack Legal Department and Treasury staff for the Commercial Crime Bureau (CCB) inquiry on 100 companies linked to Allied. Senior police sources said it could take months, if not years, to unravel the web of companies operated by Malaysian businessman Lee Ming Tee. The police action follows information gained during an investigation ordered by the Financial Secretary Hamish Macleod into transactions within the group and its partners since January 1, 1990. Lawyers have spent the past two weeks combing through the findings which were presented to Mr Macleod on August 28 for later public distribution. The investigation was carried out by Nicholas Allen of Coopers and Lybrand at a cost of $46 million to the taxpayer and will be made public for the first time today. Specialists on secondment to the police comprise 10 accountants from Arthur Andersen, two prosecutors from the Legal Department's commercial crime section and four Treasury accountants, including two senior officers. They joined more than 200 officers - including fraud and computer crime experts - to trace and seize documents in nearly 40 offices affiliated to Mr Lee's Allied Group. The police have warrants to search for documents going back to 1987 in 100 of the 250 public and private companies linked to the group. Special out-of-budget police funds have been set aside for the inquiry, but no limit has been set on the expenditure, which will not be reviewed for several months. CCB head, Detective Chief Superintendent Neil McCabe, said yesterday he could not elaborate on the initial police statement but said: ''We are looking at a long, expensive investigation.'' Dozens of boxes of documents now sit in the CCB's Wan Chai Tower headquarters for later sifting, but most of the work remains concentrated in offices, getting into computer memories and deciding which documents to take. Only original documents can be used in court. Mr McCabe said 200 officers were still working, but once the initial raids were complete, a core of about a 60 officers - a full fraud division - would remain on the case full-time. The large number of offices still in Allied's Gloucester Road headquarters had not stopped day-to-day working, said company spokesman Drew Rennie. ''It's definitely business as usual, things seem a little different but day-to-day work is continuing,'' Mr Rennie said. Staff arriving for work at the Allied Fujima building yesterday morning were again bemused by the heavy police presence. ''We only know what we have read in the papers. We have not been told anything,'' said one woman. About 40 men from the Police Tactical Unit entered the building shortly before 8 am, followed by dozens of plain clothes officers who continued sifting through the Allied records. By 8.30 am company security guards were preventing reporters from entering the offices and police were on guard on several of the building's 24 floors. This morning, in a last-ditch attempt to stem or curb proceedings, the group was pressing on with its bid to obtain leave to apply for a judicial review with a request to take the case to the Privy Council in London. Leave has already been turned down by the High Court and the Court of Appeal. Judgment was handed down on the first appeal yesterday, rejecting once again claims of a witch-hunt in the investigation. Even so, the group is pursuing its case. A spokesman said: ''We believe it is in the best interest of our shareholders to pursue this action.''
