A local man was arrested this week for cheating the local government’s SME Aid Scheme out of 399,000 patacas, claiming that the interest-free loan that he had received from the fund was to purchase a vehicle and engineering equipment for his company, Judiciary Police (PJ) Ho Chan Nam said at a special press conference yesterday.
The 49-year-old suspect surnamed Lei owns an engineering company.
According to Ho, Lei applied for an interest-free loan from the SME Aid Scheme run by the Industry and Commerce Support Division of the Economic and Technological Development Bureau (DSEDT) in November 2019. In the application, Lei claimed that the money was for buying a vehicle and engineering equipment for his company. Lei’s application for a loan of 399,000 patacas was approved on April 9 last year.
The scheme has been set up by the government to help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) develop their business.
When DSEDT officials checked Lei’s progress report in January on how his company had spent the mone, the documents concerning his company’s vehicle purchase raised suspicion. The bureau then reported the case to the Judiciary Police for follow-up investigation, Ho said.
According to Ho, the Judiciary Police discovered that Lei’s company bought the vehicle in 2019 before he had applied for the loan. Lei then transferred the vehicle ownership to a 49-year-old friend surnamed Vong in 2020, but changed it back to himself early this year.
Ho said the Judiciary Police told Lei and Vong to report to a police station recently. Vong told the police that Lei asked him to transfer the vehicle ownership to him so that he could forge the respective documents. Vong insisted that he did not receive any money from Lei for agreeing to the ownership change, while Lei admitted that he defrauded the government because of his company’s liquidity issues.
Lei was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of fraud and document forgery, according to Ho.
The hooded fraud suspect is being escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters to a PJ vehicle yesterday. Photo courtesy of TDM
Evidence seized from the fraud suspect such as forged documents is displayed at the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters yesterday.
