Ng Lap Seng: a tale of two cities

Reading the press in English over my Timorese coffee this morning (and later on the Portuguese press… note the distinction), I really ravelled at the latest twist and turn of the Ng Lap Seng story, this pure Macao tycoon, also a member of the CPPCC and of the Economic Development Committee, who got arrested in the US two weeks ago for not properly declaring some US$4.5 million that were supposed to be used to buy arts and flats... Well, now we learn that he stands accused of bribing no less than the former president of the UN General Assembly (John Ashe) in order to have his own UN Macau Conference Center! What is really fascinating is the deafening silence of the press in Chinese in Macao... I guess years and years of ads placed by Windsor Arch, Sun Kian Ip (新建業集團) and South Bay Development Co. are ultimately bound to pay off.

Macau Daily News is clearly the worst (nothing related to Mr Ng since September 23!), but even Va Kio, San Wa Ou or Tai Chung Pou only publish very brief mentions of the big article from the Wall Street Journal that everybody is using this morning. A quick check using Mr Ng's Chinese name (吳立勝) over the past few weeks returns this:

The only things decent in Chinese come from the liberal press in Hong Kong (Ming Pao and Commercial Times).

If one searches 吳立勝 on Google or Baidu however, the search can return pretty interesting results. I had already mentioned two weeks ago that Sun Kian Ip had been ditched by another UN sponsored outlet called the Global Compact (the letter of commitment addressed to Ban Ki-moon himself and signed by Mr Ng is truly fascinating: "I am pleased to confirm that Sun Kian Ip Group supports the ten principles of the Global Compact with respect to human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption"). But there is more: fascinating pics of Mr Ng and all his acquaintances in Macao can be found here and here. There is also an interesting article on Yiernews pointing to Mr Ng's buddies for the South Bay Development Co.

One of my personal favorites is this one (authorised by Chinanews; I hesitated a long time with the one of the Charity dinner given by Sun Kian Ip in 2012... but it was not Chinanews sponsored):

Clearly, Ho Iat Seng, the president of the Legislative Assembly in Macao and also the Standing Committee member of the National People's Congress, is arguing for a proper mechanism within the CPPCC to expel Mr Ng, if 市民日報 is to be trusted.