More civil servants abusing power for personal gain: ICAC watchdog

[KingsOfTheDay]

More civil servants abusing power for personal gain: ICAC watchdog

The trend of public-office holders taking advantage of their positions should be dealt with decisively, the ICAC Operations Review Committee chairman says

PUBLISHED : Monday, 27 January, 2014, 12:57pm
UPDATED : Monday, 27 January, 2014, 2:31pm

Samuel Chan [email protected]

ICAC Operations Review Committee chairman Michael Sze Cho-cheung. Photo: Edward Wong

Hong Kong is seeing a growing trend of civil servants abusing their power for personal advantage, a watchdog over the city’s graft-busting agency says.

“The trend of public-office holders taking advantage of their positions and doing what they should not be doing deserves attention,” ICAC Operations Review Committee chairman Michael Sze Cho-cheung said on Monday morning.

Sze was giving a review of his committee’s works alongside three other committees that monitor the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

“The gains they get now may seem trivial, but more civil servants will abuse their power for personal gain if we do not treat this seriously now,” he warned.

He also noted that recent high-profile corruption allegations involving senior government officials signalled a changing trend from merely accepting advantages to conflicts of interest and making personal gains while discharging public duties.

Asked about the progress of ICAC’s investigations into the corruption allegations against former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and the agency’s former chief Timothy Tong Hin-ming, Sze said he would not comment on individual cases.

The Department of Justice would decide whether there would be any prosecution, he said, adding that he hoped for the public’s understanding that investigations take time.

Sze also highlighted the concern that civil servants who joined the government after 2000 might abuse their power in office to provide for their post-retirement life, as they were not entitled to a pension unlike their predecessors.

At the same press briefing, Advisory Committee on Corruption chairman Chow Chung-kong said the city saw its largest drop in complaints last year.

Last year, ICAC received 2,653 cases, excluding election-related complaints, compared with 3,932 in 2012. This was a 33 per cent decrease year-on-year.

Chow said the graft-buster’s tarnished image after the scandal surrounding its previous commissioners’s spending spree could have contributed to the decrease in complaints received.

But he said a 36 per cent drop in complaints regarding property management accounted for a third of the decrease in total complaints last year. This could be attributed to the ICAC’s anti-corruption efforts last year, he said.