Two former directors of Macao’s now-defunct Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau, Li Canfeng and Jaime Carion, have been respectively sentenced to 24 years and 20 years in jail after being found guilty of bribery, money laundering, and forgery charges, according to public broadcaster TDM.
Carion’s whereabouts are unknown; he is sentenced in absentia.
Three businessmen involved in the case, William Kuan Vai Lam, Sio Tak Hong, and Ng Lap Seng, were meanwhile given terms of 18 years, 24 years, and 15 years, the report said.
They were found guilty of a series of crimes, including membership of a secret organisation, money laundering, document forgery and giving bribes. Ng had formerly been imprisoned in the US for 34 months for bribing a former president of the United Nations General Assembly.
The trial started last November and involved 21 defendants.
Li was arrested on the mainland in December 2021. Carion, a Portuguese national, retired from public service in 2014 and reportedly went on the run in Portugal. Authorities seized 40 properties owned by or linked to him, his wife and a daughter in 2019.
Defence attorneys have professed themselves shocked by the severity of the sentences, TDM reports.
