Rosário: Land swap case handed to CCAC

By
Newsdesk

The Office of Secretary for Transport and Public Works Raimundo Arrais do Rosário said that the land swap case related to the city’s Iec Long Firecracker Factory in Taipa has been handed to the graft watchdog Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) for further investigation; as such he is not at liberty to make further comment.
The Secretary was responding to reporters yesterday afternoon at the Legislative Assembly after releasing a statement yesterday morning saying the case should be handed to CCAC.
‘The Secretary for Transport and Public Works is concerned about the Iec Long Factory case,’ the statement reads. ‘After analysing the data at hand, the Secretary believes that this case should be forwarded to the Commission Against Corruption.’
The site of the now defunct Iec Long Firecracker Factory is what the MSAR Government agreed to acquire in January 2001 from its private owner in order to turn it into a theme park, official dispatch No.87/2006 reads. In return, the dispatch stated, the government was to compensate the owner with land occupying 152,073 square metres located next to Avenida da Praia, near the Taipa Houses Museum park.
The owner was a company called Sociedade de Desenvolvimento Predial Baía da Nossa Senhora da Esperança, S.A., controlled by local businessman and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference member Sio Tak Hong, who is also the chairman of Capital Estate Ltd. and owner of Hotel Fortuna, a casino-hotel on the Macau Peninsula.
The land swap deal between the MSAR Government and Mr. Sio was later linked to Ms. Pansy Ho Chiu King’s Shun Tak Group, as in 2002 her company purchased from Mr. Sio the interest for a site of 99,000 square metres out of the 150,000 square metre-plus site that Sio could obtain from the government.
But no development took place on the site near Avenida da Praia as the government had then decided to conserve the area as a nature park.
Consequently, Shun Tak asked the government in 2005 to grant it an 18,363 square metre site on the ZAPE waterfront on the Macau Peninsula, an area that later housed the high-end residence and shopping complex One Central and Mandarin Oriental Hotel. That gave Shun Tak the interest for the remaining 80,637 square metres to be developed.