The Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) said in a statement on Friday that it has uncovered a “supplementary-remuneration” scam involving a supervisor of a customs station at a border checkpoint cheating the government out of over 130,000 patacas by fabricating attendances in collusion with his subordinates.
According to the statement, after receiving a report last year which indicated that the supervisor had copied his time card and instructed his co-workers to punch it in and out on his behalf, the CCAC launched an investigation and discovered that the supervisor and several customs officers working in the station’s office had “duplicate time cards”, which were used by one of the officers to punch in and out on behalf of other colleagues who had not yet arrived to work, or those who had left the customs station earlier than their working schedule, creating false attendance records in the electronic time keeping system of the Macau Customs Service (SA).
The statement noted that the suspects are, respectively, a customs superintendent, a customs inspector, a customs sub-inspector, a customs principal officer and three customs officers.
In addition, according to the statement, the seven suspects also took advantage of being responsible for planning the shift schedules and submitting the time card clock-in information which contained their false attendance records to relevant departments, so as to cover up the disciplinary offences of those who arrived to work late or left early, defrauding the government over supplementary remuneration amounting to more than 130,000 patacas.
An unidentified person reported the case to the graft buster, during the subsequent investigation the Macau Customs Office revealed one of the seven suspects, according to the statement, which noted that the case has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP).
Customs implements measures to prevent further loophole
Meanwhile, the Macau Customs Office underlined in a separate statement on Friday that in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident, it has re-examined its attendance management system and supervision mechanism of staff members, as well as optimised the operation of the time cards and video surveillance equipment systems at each of its service locations, so as to plug the loophole and reinforce the supervision of its staff members’ truthful records when entering and leaving work.
This undated photo taken from the Commission Against Corruption’s (CCAC) website yesterday shows its headquarters on the 17th floor of Golden Dragon Centre in Nape.
