A herbal tea manufacturing company sourced its raw materials from various Mainland suppliers. Mr Fong, a senior merchandiser of the company, was responsible for purchasing herbal materials and inventory control.

Recently, Mr Fong who had experienced financial difficulties was in desperate need of money.  He sent several text messages to a Mainland herbal supplier to solicit a loan of RMB60,000. Mr Fong suggested to the supplier that more purchase orders would be placed if the supplier deposited the money into his wife’s bank account in Hong Kong. The supplier made no response to the request. Shortly after, Mr Fong sent another text message to the supplier asking for another loan of RMB30,000 and threatened to cut the purchase orders if it was not granted. The supplier did not agree to his request, as it amounted to solicitation of bribes. The supplier then reported the matter to the management of the herbal tea manufacturer. In view of the severity of the matter and having no tolerance for solicitation of bribes by its staff, the management of the herbal tea manufacturer immediately reported the case to the ICAC.

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.

Felix, a production manager of a large toy factory, had two assistants, Gigi and Gordon.  Gigi was the favourite because she was a young charming lady and also a cousin of the General Manager while Gordon was not because he was brash and sometimes outright insolent.  They were both responsible for handling the overtime claims for workers on the toy production.  The Finance Department had complained to Felix a few times about Gigi and raised queries over some overtime claims forwarded by Gigi.  There were widespread rumours that Gigi might have overstated the overtime hours and even forged claims by using ghost workers.  Yet, Felix could not bring himself to ask Gigi for explanations but went easy on her by telling her to be more ‘prudent’ when handling the overtime claims in the future.  On the other hand, the Finance Department contacted Felix again but this time was about Gordon.  They had questions about some discrepancies on the hours of the overtime claims forwarded by Gordon.  However, Felix treated Gordon more strictly and was much firmer on the occasion.

Was Felix being equally fair to his assistants when handling the queries from the Finance Department?  Would it upset the General Manager if Felix was not kind to Gigi at work, which in return affected Felix’s work prospect?  How would it affect his professional image in the eyes of other colleagues?

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.

Cherry was a shipping clerk of Silky Way Ltd (SWL), a manufacturer of silk blouses for export to overseas buyers.  SWL had factories in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Fuzhou.

Cherry was on good terms with Ray, proprietor of All-The-Way Forwarding Company which handled more than 80%of the shipment for SWL. All-The-Way had been making a handsome profit all along and Ray felt that this was partly due to Cherry who smoothed out whatever hiccups there might be in the freight arrangement.

When Christmas was near, he asked Cherry out for dinner.  Over dessert, Ray presented Cherry with an expensive watch.  Cherry was surprised but pleased.

Ray then went on to talk about his plans for the coming year.  He told Cherry he would like to set up a partnership with Cherry.  Noting that Cherry was in a puzzle, Ray elaborated.

“I always feel that the practice within the freight forwarding business of charging shipments of Chinese products a lower rate unreasonable.  I am going to equalise all charges for all shipments despite the fact that some goods are manufactured in China.  Your boss need not know the change or else he might turn to other forwarding companies. You just help me in handling the documents and you can get your share.  Nobody will raise any queries if you are in charge.  They all trust you.”

When Cherry was too surprised to answer, Ray went on, “It would not be difficult at all to make alterations in the computer database.  With the printouts, you can proceed to work on the invoices and accounts easily.”

Cherry did not know what to say.  It seemed to be a tempting proposal but to do so would be cheating SWL.  While she was hesitating, Ray prodded again.  “You deserve more than what you are getting now at SWL. With all the time and energy that you are putting in at the office, you are grossly underpaid.  You have to look after your own interest too.  SWL is already running a flourishing business.”

Director Mr Lai was a village-type house developer and a director of an estate agency. His agency had acquired a land lot in the New Territories for constructing village-type houses.

Mr Lai assigned the project to his assistant Clement who held an estate agent’s licence. Clement knew Mr Shum who claimed himself a village representative. They often gambled together and Clement ended up owing money to Mr Shum. When Clement failed to make a repayment, Mr Shum asked Clement to deceive Mr Lai by making use of Mr Lai’s eagerness to get the project underway so that Clement could repay the debts. Clement felt he had no alternative but to do as Mr Shum instructed.  One day, Clement told Mr Lai that Mr Shum, the village representative, had asked the company to donate $500,000 to the village fund. Otherwise, the village residents would object the coming village-type house construction project. To avoid complications, Mr Lai made a cheque to Mr Shum and Clement returned a false receipt on Mr Shum’s behalf.  

Later, Mr Lai suspected that corruption might be involved in the incident and reported it to the ICAC.  After investigation, it was found that Mr Shum was not a real village representative, but only an ordinary villager.

Ronald worked in an estate agency. His employer trusted him and provided him with training; yet Ronald felt he could have done better. Ronald planned to marry his girlfriend in a year’s time. To prepare for the costly wedding, he applied for a huge loan from a finance company, putting himself in a position where he had to work very hard to repay the debt. After successfully renting out Ms Yeung’s flat at $30,000 per month, Ronald asked Ms Yeung to deposit the $15,000 commission into the bank account of a consultancy firm which was set up by himself. Ronald also lied about the consultancy firm being a subsidiary of the estate agency which he worked for. To conceal the whereabouts of the commission, Ronald submitted a false report to his employer stating that Ms Yeung’s tenancy transaction had been facilitated by a consultancy firm and Ms Yeung would only be willing to pay commission to the consultancy firm. Ronald’s employer was suspicious about these arrangements and checked the consultancy firm’s details. Ronald’s dishonest act was revealed and a report was made to the ICAC.

Vincent, an estate agent of an agency, facilitated the sale of Mr Leung’s flat to Mrs Pong at a price of $34 million. In line with regular practice, both buyer and seller had to pay 1% of the purchase price as commission to the agency. After the transaction was completed, Vincent showed an agreement and a fax to Mr Leung and Mrs Pong. The agreement indicated that the transaction had been carried out through two estate agencies, Vincent’s agency and Agency B. The fax was issued by Vincent’s agency and indicated that Agency B would collect the commission on its behalf. As the agreement and fax bore the signatures of the persons responsible in both estate agencies as well as company chops, Mr Leung and Mrs Pong paid the commission accordingly. In fact, Vincent had forged the agreement and fax document with a view to embezzling his employer’s commission using Agency B’s account. Agency B was later to return 80% of the commission it received to Vincent. Meanwhile, Vincent told his employer that another estate agency had beaten him to the transaction. Vincent’s agency made a report to the ICAC after suspecting that Vincent had been bribed to refer business to another estate agency.

Ivy was a sales manager of a sportswear distributor. The company had a discount policy for bulk purchase of sportswear that every 100 sports jerseys sold would enjoy a discount of 10%. The soccer jersey of the latest winning team was selling like hot cakes.  A small sportswear shop in Mongkok placed an order for 50 of this jersey and another shop in the area also ordered another 50.  Since they were in the same district, the delivery would be made together.  A thought struck Ivy.  Why didn’t she combine the two orders and make out an order for 100?  She could doctor the invoices up. The discount would be a source of her extra income. And it would not harm anyone.

But would it be considered as cheating the company? Should she split the gains into three and share with the two sportswear shops?