Hong Kong health expert admits abusing position to dupe WHO, other bodies into paying over HK$4.25 million of research grants, service fees
- Joseph Kam, 64, falsely portrayed over the years that a microbiologists’ group he co-founded had official connections with local health authorities
- Former consultant microbiologist with Department of Health made bogus claims to World Health Organization and two other overseas institutions
Joseph Kam Kai-man acknowledged at the District Court on Monday he had breached the trust placed in him as the second-in-command of the Department of Health’s Public Health Laboratory Services Branch over a span of 8½ years.
The 64-year-old retired civil servant and tuberculosis expert faces up to seven years in jail after he pleaded guilty to four charges of misconduct in public office and two of fraud.
The court heard Kam had falsely portrayed over the years that a microbiologists’ group he co-founded had official connections with local health authorities in a bid to deceive the WHO, a research institute run by the Japanese government, and a Swiss non-profit organisation working with a charity foundation launched by Bill Gates.
Kam was a consultant microbiologist of directorate level at the Public Health Laboratory Services Branch under the Centre for Health Protection from June 2004 until the start of his pre-retirement leave in September 2012.
He had looked after a number of facilities, including the Hong Kong Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory, which won recognition from the WHO as a supranational reference facility for conducting anti-tuberculosis drug susceptibility testing.
Kam misrepresented to the WHO that the Hong Kong Association of Medical Microbiologists, which he co-founded in 1992 alongside 10 people working in the same field, was a partner with the laboratory and was authorised by the latter to sign six service agreements between 2009 and 2014.
On behalf of the laboratory, Kam agreed to assist in research on resistance to anti-tuberculosis drugs in North Korea, as well as organising a study tour in Hong Kong for the country’s officials.