Resources

Patrick was a financial controller of an information technology company planning to go public.  His bosses asked him to manipulate management accounting data and to reimburse expenses without any supporting document. The sponsor offered him valuable information after the engagement......   

Andrew was the chief accountant of a large trading company.  He discovered a number of fraudulent and corrupt activities involving senior sales representatives and their mainland clients and such activities were condoned by the senior management.   

Howard was a newly joined senior internal audit manager of a publicly listed company.  On presenting to the Managing Director about his evidence of wrongdoings by the Purchasing Director, he was asked to stay away from the case.  

In a construction project of a commercial complex valued over $500 million, the main contractor employed ten Foremen to monitor the work of sub-contractors.   A Site Engineer of the company, who took charge of the Foremen, was responsible for the overall supervision of the project.

The salaries of the Foremen and other workers were calculated on a daily basis.    Each  of  them  was  required  to  punch  an  attendance  card  when reporting on and off duty every day.   The attendance cards and the punching machine were placed in the Engineer’s office so that when the Foremen and other  staff  reported  on  or  off  duty,  they  had  to  punch  the  cards  in  the Engineer’s office.  The Engineer was responsible for ascertaining that his subordinates personally punched the cards.   At the beginning of each month, the Engineer was responsible for calculating the salaries of his subordinates based on their individual attendance records for the previous month.  His calculations and the punched cards were then sent to the Accounts Department of the company for processing salary payment.

As the family of one of the Foremen, CHAN, was in Mainland China, CHAN would seek every opportunity to go to the Mainland to see his family. One day, CHAN went to see the Engineer and requested for three days’ off. CHAN, however, requested the Engineer not to record his leave but instead punched the attendance card for him so as to show that he was working on the three days.   In return, CHAN offered the Engineer $500 for assisting him in punching the attendance card and turning a blind eye to his absence.

The Engineer turned down the offer and reported the matter to the ICAC. Eventually, CHAN was convicted for offering a bribe to the Engineer, contrary to Section 9 of the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance (POBO) and was sentenced to imprisonment.

Questions

1. Has the Foreman committed any criminal offence?
2. If the Engineer rejects the bribe but still assists the Foreman in falsifying attendance, has the Engineer committed any bribery offence?
3. If the Engineer accepts the bribe from the Foreman for assisting him in forging attendance records, what would be the possible consequences to the Engineer?

Dr M, the Chief of Service of the Paediatric Department of a public hospital, has the approving authority for purchases not exceeding $100,000. His girlfriend Phoebe is a sales manager of a large medical equipment company.

Recently, David, the Department Operations Manager, recommended a replacement of a medical equipment and the sourcing was in progress. As Dr M knew that Phoebe was being pressured by her boss to secure more business for the company, he offered to help her.  After going through the quotations obtained by David, Dr M found that the price quoted by Phoebe was not the lowest.  He thus asked David to mark up the quotations of other companies so that he could secure the contract of the medical equipment to Phoebe’s company.   In order to please Dr M, David agreed to the proposal.