Chinese executive filmed taking cash on Colombia metro, South America’s biggest project

Colombian prosecutors are investigating allegations that executives of a Chinese state-owned contractor building the Bogota metro demanded cash from a local subcontractor in exchange for releasing payments owed for work on the project, according to an investigation published over the weekend by Semana, the country’s leading news magazine.

The consortium building the line has denied any wrongdoing, saying the money seen changing hands was a retention payment agreed upon between the two firms in a contractual dispute over the quality of the subcontractor’s work.

The allegations centre on a 26-minute video showing the legal representative of a Colombian subcontractor handing over 60 million pesos (US$19,000) in cash to a commercial manager of China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) at the firm’s former offices in Bogota’s Teusaquillo district on April 18.

In the footage, the Colombian contractor pulls a dark bag from his suitcase and passes it to the Chinese executive, identified in the criminal complaint only as Yang, telling him in English that each package contained 5 million pesos (US$1,600).

The executive then spends roughly 10 minutes counting the banknotes before writing what appears to be a receipt in a notebook.

According to the complaint cited by the magazine, the payment was demanded as a condition for CHEC to approve invoices worth from 1 billion to 1.2 billion pesos (US$320,000 to US$380,000) that the subcontractor, Union Temporal Metrobuild, said it was owed for work carried out in March.