A project engineer is employed by a chemical product manufacturer to supervise the engineering works performed by its contractors.   Due to his job nature, he develops a close companionship with a contractor who has recently undertaken a gas tank repair project of the company.

Learning that the project engineer suffers from substantial loss in a recent stock investment, the contractor immediately offers to lend the project engineer $200,000 to help him overcome the financial difficulty.

When time comes for an inspection to be conducted for the gas tank repairing works, the contractor requests the project engineer to turn a blind eye to certain defects found in the finished works, saying that the defects can have little chance to pose a safety hazard.   He also reminds the project engineer of his generosity to him in the past.   The project engineer finds it difficult to require the contractor to rectify all the defects found in the works.

An assistant service manager of a company accepted several pieces of computer equipment from a sales manager of a computer hardware supplier, including a scanner, a printer, a projector and a CD writer valued a total of HK$110,000, as a reward for placing purchase orders with the supplier. The company did have procurement guidelines that stipulated the minimum number of quotations required for every purchase. However, the assistant service manager colluded with the supplier to produce false quotations to deceive his employer. The assistant service manager also falsified some documents to get his employer to pay for a hard disk, a monitor and a central processing unit, all of which he took home for his own personal use.

When receiving his company's instruction to design a computer software for a digital answering machine, a company's software engineer claimed that he was too busy to take up the job and recommended it to be contracted out to an outside software house which was owned solely by his former colleague.

The software house owner at first had no intention to undertake the job.  But the software engineer persuaded him to secure the job first and then sub-contract it back to the software engineer.  Using the software house as a disguise to deceive his own company, the software engineer could pocket $95,000 being 90% of the project fee while the rest would go to the owner.

An international company intended to set up its South East Asian headquarters in Hong Kong.  A committee was appointed, chaired by the company's vice president, Susanna, to select the supplier of IT equipment and computer software for the new office.

One of Susanna's old school friends, who worked for a computer supplier, learnt of the possible contract and approached Susanna.  In an attempt to influence Susanna's decision over the contract for the IT equipment and software, he gave her an expensive watch as a gift. Though fully aware of her classmate's intention  and  clearly  knowing  that  she  did  not  have  the  power  to  affect  the decision  of  the  committee,  Susanna  still  succumbed  to  the  temptation  and accepted the gift. In a further attempt to influence her decision, her school friend paid Susanna a visit at home and deliberately left behind a new notebook computer, saying it was for her trial use during overseas business trips.

After prudent consideration, the committee finally decided to award the equipment and software contract to another company.  Susanna's old school friend was upset at the outcome but could do nothing about it. Later, some of Susanna's colleagues learnt of the watch and notebook computer, which gave rise to much gossip in her company. The incident eventually drew the attention of senior management and was reported to the ICAC for investigation.

Man, an IT manager, was responsible for sourcing a LAN system to be set up in his large engineering company.  He started to contact various contractors and one of them was a medium sized computer firm called ABC whose technical sales manager Gordon was a personable young man.

Gordon tried to persuade Man to use his suggested LAN system by quoting a price at $500,000 and claiming it the best bargain in the market.  Indeed, Gordon had his eyes set on the cost of after-sales service and maintenance which was actually quite profitable.  Man hesitated and said that he needed to seek his supervisor’s approval first as well as to seek a few more other quotations for comparison.  In order to secure the deal, Gordon made a suggestion that he would offer Man a set of free computer equipment of the latest model for his personal use if Man assisted Gordon in getting the contract. 

What should Man do? Should Man accept Gordon’s attractive offer?  Would he commit any offence by doing so?

Tony was a Customer Services Officer of a telephone company.  He tried his best in whatever he was assigned to do.  Very soon, he made a name for himself as a hardworking and responsible young officer.  Soon he got to know a lot of people working in his section.  One of them was Curtis.

Curtis was a part-time phone salesman working with Tony in the same team.  He had contacts everywhere and could gain entry to many exclusive clubs.  He treated Tony to dinners in the evenings, and sometimes even golf trips across the border on Sundays.

Tony picked up golf eagerly. He loved the greens and enjoyed the leisurely pace of the sport.  What was more was the pride of being among the well-to-dos in town.  He wished he had his own golf-membership but he knew it was almost impossible, given his present income and connections.

Curtis could guess what was on Tony's mind and told him, “If you release the personal information of your clients to me, I can fix a membership for you.  You have easy access to the computer records and this should not be a problem.”

Tony knew very well that Curtis would misuse these clients’ personal information for illegal gains.  He did not wish to be part of any scam.  But he could not resist the temptation of the golf membership. It would be decades before he could secure one on his own merits and earnings.  Perhaps it would not be difficult to find another colleague who also had access to the data to be the scapegoat.  Dinner and entertainment by Curtis also flashed across his mind.  Tony began to waver.  Should he say ‘yes’ to Curtis?

One day at dinner time, an inspector of a government department was chatting with a former colleague who owned a consultancy company.  During the meeting, the inspector mentioned that he had been in financial difficulties recently. The owner of the consultancy company took the chance to lend a helping hand to the inspector by offering him a loan of substantial amount.  At the same time, the owner of the consultancy company requested the inspector to copy to him from the database of the departmental computer and saved them into his personal USB.  Those records concerned the business organizations that had failed to comply with the regulations enforced by his department.  In return for the help from his former colleague, the inspector obtained over 100 records and sent them to the owner of the consultancy company.  The owner of the consultancy company used the records as a sales lead, approaching those business organisations on the list and touting his consultancy services to them. Some of the business organisations received sales calls from the consultancy company almost as soon as they had received warning notices from the government. They suspected corruption and reported the matter to the ICAC.

Tim was the director of a Hong Kong company and was stationed in its Mainland factory. In the process of awarding a freight contract to a cross–boundary transportation company for goods to be transported to Hong Kong, he claimed he was the factory owner. Tim also falsely claimed that he needed to inflate the transportation cost to offset certain monthly miscellaneous expenses, which were not chargeable to the company's account. He instructed the transportation company operator to inflate the transportation fees on the monthly statement by HK$20,000. He then submitted the statement to his company for issuing of payment to the transportation company via the personal bank account of the factory accountant.   Tim had subsequently pocketed HK$180,000 through the bank account of the accountant for nine months.

The transportation company operator later discovered that Tim was only a paid director and not the actual factory owner.

Daphne, a purchasing officer in a watch manufacturing company, was responsible for recommending spare parts suppliers.  One day, a supplier, Simon, invited her for a lunch and made a business suggestion.  If Daphne recommended her company continuing to use Simon’s company as a supplier, Simon would mark up the quotation price by 4% from the next purchase order and they could equally split the profit by having 2% each.

Daphne was scandalized when hearing the suggestion.  Although Simon’s suggested mark-up price was still by far the lowest among the lot, the quality of his products was not as good as the others and only just met the company’s required standard.  On a second thought, she needed an extra income at the moment because she had just made the down-payment for her new flat.  After all, her company would still get a good bargain price.

Would Daphne commit an offence if she accepted Simon’s suggestion?  What factors does she need to consider when making a decision?

Mr Chow started a joint venture with three of his friends by setting up a chemical engineering company in Hong Kong and a chemical manufacturing factory in Guangdong. The four of them were all directors of the company, each holding 25% of the company shares.

As Mr Chow had substantial experience in operating factories in Chinese Mainland and had developed an extensive business network in Hong Kong and Chinese Mainland especially with Mainland suppliers and government officials, he offered to manage the Mainland factory as the paid General Manager in charge of the business there.

Mr Chow often boasted that the success of the Mainland factory was due to his networking clout. At the same time, he kept grumbling that he had to cover the enormous entertainment expenses with his own money. As the General Manager of the Mainland factory, Mr Chow was entrusted with key procurement decisions. When one of his Hong Kong suppliers learned that Mr Chow had recently bought a property in Chinese Mainland, he presented Mr Chow with an expensive audio- visual set-up, hoping that this gift would secure a contract for the supply of chemical raw materials.

This seemingly thoughtful present soon brought its reward in the form of a first order from Mr Chow. To secure future business, the supplier also offered 5% of the transaction amount as a rebate to Mr Chow at his request. Subsequently, the bribe money was deposited into Mr Chow’s bank account in Hong Kong.