Mainland Chinese firm, director admit fraud in HK$52.9m Hong Kong bottled water scandal

A mainland Chinese company and its director have pleaded guilty to fraud after submitting falsified certificates to win a HK$52.9 million (US$6.78 million) contract to supply drinking water to civil servants in Hong Kong.

The high-profile procurement scandal came to light in August last year after civil servants raised concerns about the quality of products supplied by Xin Ding Xin Trade, which held a three-year contract to provide XinLe-brand bottled water to government offices on Hong Kong Island and some outlying islands.

At a hearing on Thursday, company director Lui Tsz-chung pleaded guilty to seven charges, admitting that between May and August last year he submitted altered documents to the Government Logistics Department, deceiving it into believing that his products had been vetted and produced by Robust (Guangdong) Drinking Water, a prominent food and beverage company on the mainland that manufactures purified and mineral bottled water.

Xin Ding Xin Trade also pleaded guilty to violating the Food Safety Ordinance and possessing 2,057 bottles of water bearing a false trade description.

The District Court heard that Lui commissioned an individual on the mainland to alter the company name on a drinking-water testing report issued by Robust for a qualified brand.

After being awarded the tender in June, Xin Ding Xin Trade supplied government offices with 32,081 bottles of water between July 18 and August 13, 2025.

In August, Lui and his accomplice applied to change the supplier from Robust to Dongguan Dongwa Drinking Water, altering information on three reports issued by the Hong Kong Standards and Testing Centre to match the new supplier, a unit of the Hangzhou Wahaha Group.

Separately, in April 2025, Lui logged a false annual report to fraudulently deceive the Department of Health in a bid to secure a tender to supply one million doses of rapid antigen test kits for viruses.

The Public Health Laboratory Services Branch did not process his tender at the time because staff suspected irregularities in the submission.

Lui also pleaded guilty to one count of attempted fraud in relation to that offence, which came to light during the investigation into the water procurement scandal.

Judge Ernest Lin Kam-hung remanded him in custody, pending sentencing on December 30.

The South China Morning Post previously reported that the deal with Xin Ding Xin Trade was one of the first such contracts awarded to a mainland firm by the government, beating the long-time supplier AS Watson, a subsidiary of tycoon Li Ka-shing’s CK Hutchison Holdings.

As the police investigated the suspected illegal activities, the Audit Commission in October last year also found that the water procurement case involved lapses in vetting procedures.

Its review revealed that some civil servants failed to follow up on signs of fraud during the vetting process – such as when the tenderer submitted documents with ‘Robust’ incorrectly spelt in Chinese before resubmitting them with the corrected name – as well as during the initial stages of the contract, when insufficient safety tests were conducted on the water supplied.

In January, Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung Ho Poi-yan announced that two Government Logistics Department staff members would face a disciplinary hearing.

Yeung said the staff failed to perform their duties, lacking the awareness, judgment and analytical ability to identify issues and report them to their superiors in time.