Critics ask why ex-works minister was the only public servant tried over graft case
A Macau lawmaker said the 27-year jail term passed yesterday on former minister of works Ao Man-long for corruption did not mean the city's chaotic tendering system for land purchases and public works projects would change.
He said the system was urgently in need of major reform, all the more so given that the case had left several questions unanswered.
'Why was Ao the only civil servant put on trial?
'We are talking about one of the largest graft cases in town. It must definitely have involved more than one government official, if not an entire syndicate,' pro-democracy lawmaker Au Kam-san said.
Less than a third of the HK$800 million in assets Macau's Commission Against Corruption was able to trace to Ao was accounted for in the trial, which focused on bribes paid to win tenders for public works projects, not the land deals where the big money can be made.
While the court learned that Ao had kept a diary in which he logged payments to him, the reason for them and their sources, the names of many of the businessmen and projects on his list were blacked out and a dozen suspects are still on the run.
