Hong Kong’s anti-corruption agency has foiled a graft operation involving a local vape shop and delivery workers, who allegedly collected bribes amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month.
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Eric Chan Cheuk-hay, principal investigator of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, said on Friday that the agency had arrested 16 in connection with the case last month, seizing more than 200,000 vape pens and oil pellets worth over HK$20 million (US$2.6 million).
“The new law [in 2022] and corresponding policies of the logistics company had made it difficult to send goods to customers. Therefore, they resorted to bribing delivery workers to bypass the company’s checks,” Chan said.
Hong Kong banned alternative smoking products, including electronic cigarettes, in April 2022 by outlawing the import, sales, promotion, manufacturing, and possession for commercial purposes.
The e-cigarette shop’s operations are therefore illegal under the 2022 legal amendment.
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The arrests were made last month, after a complaint in mid-2024 triggered a six-month investigation by the agency into the online vape shop’s operations.
Those arrested were nine staff members of an established local delivery firm and seven people running an online shop selling vape pens and pellets. Those linked to the shop were a 40-year-old man who led the shop’s operations, his parents and wife, as well as three employees.