They saw it coming.
Before the fire ripped through their homes and raged for two days, before it killed many of their neighbors and friends, residents of the Wang Fuk Court estate spent years warning Hong Kong officials about a renovation project they feared was becoming dangerous.
The government had ordered repairs on the eight aging towers in the complex. But residents complained they were paying extortionate sums for shoddy work that used flammable materials, and they suspected it was because a corrupt syndicate had taken over the project.
They told the authorities that the leaders of the owners’ board and the construction firms were acting at times against residents’ interests and safety. They told local news media that a politician was most likely working with the board’s leaders. At least one resident burned a piece of the polystyrene foam used in the renovation to show how easily it caught fire.
Their complaints led various government agencies to conduct inspections and to issue warnings, notices and citations to the contractor. But there were also mixed messages, and no one stepped in to address the dangers on the whole. In an email to residents, one official described the fire risk from netting on the scaffolding as “relatively low.”
Now, 161 people are dead and thousands are displaced.
What caused the fire is still unclear. Officials have focused on substandard materials, including the netting used to catch debris and the foam panels protecting windows, both of which had been the subject of complaints by the residents as far back as August 2024.
But a review of hundreds of tender documents, meeting minutes, emails, newsletters and videos spanning nine years, as well as interviews with residents, experts and current and former government officials, shows that regulators also failed to act decisively on repeated warnings about potential corruption in the renovation project, which may have contributed to the use of the materials.
The Hong Kong authorities have long acknowledged corruption in the construction industry. Activists have warned that some companies inflate costs while using cheap materials. Those same practices went unchecked at Wang Fuk.
Residents’ emails and official statements suggest that multiple government agencies played down concerns, performed perfunctory inspections or relied on reassurances from contractors. Officials also missed other lapses, including fire alarms that failed in seven buildings.
The government has since ordered the removal of scaffolding netting at more than 200 construction sites across Hong Kong after finding that some contractors had faked safety certifications. It has also begun an independent investigation led by a judge and arrested at least 21 people on suspicion of manslaughter, corruption or fraud in connection with the Wang Fuk Court fire.
The Housing Bureau, the Labor Department and the police declined to answer questions, citing the continuing investigation. Other departments also did not respond to detailed questions.
The Hong Kong Fire Services Department said it told responsible parties at the estate in October and November to repair minor damage to equipment, including manual fire alarm switches.
The Road to the Inferno
In 2016, the government ordered the homeowners at Wang Fuk Court to repair the facades and some structural elements of the estate’s eight towers, which were built in 1983 and housed about 2,000 families. The residents were also required to replace aging fire doors and other equipment to bring the building up to code.
The order was part of a citywide program requiring buildings more than 30 years old to undergo inspections and repairs. It was introduced after a five-story tenement building collapsed in 2010, killing four people.
The policy was a boon for the construction industry and, as anti-graft officials as well as lawmakers later acknowledged, a breeding ground for corruption. Overnight, apartment owners across the city had to pool funds for major repairs. Some contractors and consultants formed cartels to bypass competition and corner lucrative contracts, past convictions show.
Renovation costs surged by 40 percent, according to one study. “As a contractor, you have all the bargaining power,” said Leung Tin Cheuk, an associate professor of economics at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, who is an author of the study. “Homeowners, on the other hand, they don’t.”
By the time Wang Fuk residents received the repair order, the government had recognized that the process was susceptible to corruption by private firms. It introduced changes to curb abuse, including a centralized online platform overseen by the quasi-governmental Urban Renewal Authority, or U.R.A.
The platform allowed homeowners to solicit bids for work and offered them technical help, including an independent adviser they could hire to estimate costs. It also monitored tenders.
Still, Chiu Yan Loy, a founder of the Hong Kong Property Owners Anti-Bid Rigging Alliance, said that some contractors conspired with homeowners boards to steer projects toward members of their cartel and charged residents for expensive materials while using cheap substitutes.
Some Wang Fuk residents say they suspect that these violations took place at their estate.
In 2019, the Wang Fuk owners board used the government’s online platform to hire a firm, Will Power Architects, to inspect the estate towers. The company’s report showed that serious fixes were needed. Water was seeping into apartments after heavy rain, and chunks of the mosaic facade were chipping off.
Next, the homeowners had to hire a consultant to supervise the work and take charge of selecting the contractor. This is when things started to go south, according to residents.
The Ignored Red Flags
A local politician, Peggy Wong, who did not live on the estate, got involved in key decisions, residents said.
The Wang Fuk homeowners board had long encouraged residents to vote for Ms. Wong, a district councilor for the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong since 2003. (She briefly lost her seat during antigovernment protests in 2019.)
She served the board as an adviser while in office, according to records of the board’s meetings.
She generally urged residents, many of whom are retirees, to back the board’s decisions and sometimes went from door to door, persuading people to sign letters authorizing her to vote on their behalf, according to seven residents who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Hong Kong’s anticorruption commission has highlighted the use of proxy voting to influence homeowners’ decisions as a common marker of corruption in renovation projects.
Ms. Wong has not been accused by the authorities of any wrongdoing, and she did not respond to questions. Beyond the votes, her exact role in the contract award remains unclear.
The former leader of the owners board could not be reached for comment. The current leaders of the board declined to comment, citing ongoing investigations. Will Power Architects did not respond to questions.
At a December 2021 meeting to choose the consultant, several residents realized that Ms. Wong was about to cast votes in their names without their knowledge. One resident, who gave only his surname, Mak, said Ms. Wong had persuaded his mother, then in her 70s, to sign an “authorization letter” that robbed him of his vote. His mother did not have a right to sign the letter, he said.
Herman Yiu, a former district councilor from a rival party who attended the meeting, said he confronted Ms. Wong about proxy votes. She became agitated and walked away, he said.
That afternoon, Will Power won the contract with a majority of votes.
The company charged just over $68,000 for both the inspection and supervision work. The fee amounted to less than 1 percent of the value of the eventual construction contract, far lower than the 6 percent to 8 percent consultants typically charge in Hong Kong.
“Because the consultant fee was not much, people did not realize it was an important decision and would affect the following renovation,” Mr. Yiu said.
Hong Kong officials, including the former chief executive Carrie Lam, have warned homeowners that very low consulting fees are often a sign of bid rigging because they suggest that consultants are accepting kickbacks.
But representatives from the Urban Renewal Authority who attended Wang Fuk residents’ meetings never questioned the fee, according to residents and the board’s meeting records.
In an emailed response to questions, the authority said that it was “not involved in the deliberation or decision-making process regarding the award of the consultancy.” Its review of tenders is limited to checking for errors and ensuring that technical assessments meet the project’s requirements, it said.
The government platform’s objective is “to reduce the risks of collusion or at least make collusion very difficult,” the authority said.
“The system cannot completely eliminate corruption or collusion,” it added.
The Unchecked Record
Nearly 60 contractors submitted bids for the Wang Fuk renovations on the government’s online platform.
Will Power endorsed a company called Prestige Construction and Engineering, saying it had an unblemished record, according to tender documents reviewed by The New York Times. In fact, over 16 years in Hong Kong, Prestige has faced dozens of civil suits, many related to labor disputes, and was brought to criminal court, mostly over worker safety, according to a Times review of court cases.
The Urban Renewal Authority had missed the contractor’s past infractions, and later said that “crime detection does not fall within the remit of the U.R.A.” But residents say they believed that firms like Prestige were in good standing because they were included in the authority’s published list of renovation firms.
Will Power also did not mention that two bidders had submitted identical prices for some of the work, according to tender documents reviewed by The Times. This is unusual because bids are submitted independently and it indicates the two bidders likely were part of the same cartel, according to Mr. Chiu, the anticorruption activist.
Prestige also had close connections to at least three other companies that participated in the bid, The Times found. The three companies are run by former and current business partners of the owner of Prestige, according to company registration records.
In January 2024, hundreds of Wang Fuk residents held a vote on an outdoor basketball court to select the contractor. The board announced later that Prestige had won, and that residents had chosen the most expensive of three work proposals put forth by the consultant, Will Power.
The project was to cost just over $43 million.
Some residents said their votes had been stolen again. This time, anger swelled into action.
A few residents set up petitions and filed a case in the Lands Tribunal to overthrow the board. (They later withdrew the case after they received a letter from the board’s lawyer, which they saw as a message to back off.)
A few months later, the board signed a contract with Prestige.
The Fire Risk Deemed ‘Relatively Low’
In June last year, residents received a letter from a law firm hired by the owners board telling them that each household owed the contractor and consultant at least $20,000 for the renovation. The first installment, about $4,000, was due within a month.
Stunned by the price and the deadline, more residents pushed to oust the owners board and to delay the payment. They signed a petition, distributed fliers and endured mosquito bites to hold evening discussions in the estate’s playground, residents said.
Some went to the police and the anticorruption commission to file complaints accusing the contractor, the consultant and the owners board of collusion. They told officials that they had been misled by the board and the consultant into approving unnecessary, expensive work.
But construction began anyway. In July, the contractor put up bamboo scaffolding around the buildings and wrapped it with green netting to catch falling objects. The owners board called a meeting in which Prestige’s project manager demonstrated how polystyrene boards would be installed to protect windows and said his company barred workers from smoking.
The residents were not reassured. Some looked up building ordinances and asked for proof that the contractor’s materials and workmanship adhered to building codes, according to interviews and social media posts.
“I’m starting to see a sea of green,” one resident wrote in a Facebook group, referring to the green netting outside the window. “I also see photos of cigarette butts.”
Some residents formed a new “accountability” group, took over the owners board in September 2024 and urged their neighbors to document and report code violations. Residents watched as the foam panels were installed; at least one person set a panel on fire to prove that it was flammable.
The residents asked why the materials on site appeared to be made by a brand that was some $2 million cheaper than what had been agreed to in the contract. The materials had been approved by the previous board and the consultant.
Prestige dismissed their concerns. At a meeting in September 2024, it played a video clip for board members and officials showing a polystyrene board catching fire briefly from a lit cigarette, then going out. Prestige did not respond to questions.
The residents sought help at the Housing Bureau, which enforces building codes at developments like Wang Fuk Court. That department found no issues with the netting. Its officials visited the estate to oversee how the consultant and contractor sampled the protective net and burned it for a test. “No combustible feature was detected,” the bureau said last month.
The residents also went to the Labor Department for help, but officials there downplayed their concerns, too. The risk of fire from the netting was “relatively low,” one official from the department wrote in October 2024, because the renovation did not include hot work with open flames.
The department, which deals with worker safety, later told residents that the materials at the construction site met fire-safety requirements. It based its finding on a quality certificate submitted by the contractor.
In emails to The Times, the department acknowledged that its initial response to the complaints had been “unclear and caused misunderstanding.”
The department also said that it had conducted 16 inspections of the project since July 2024 and warned the contractor to “take appropriate fire prevention measures” on its last visit to the site, about a week before the fire.
Fooling Inspectors
Contractors working on the Wang Fuk Court project understood how site inspections worked and how to game them, according to Hong Kong’s anticorruption agency.
After the fire, the agency’s commissioner, Danny Woo Ying-ming, revealed that contractors had changed some of the netting after it was damaged by a summer typhoon.
The new material, he said, was substandard and cost half as much as fire-safe material. (He did not say if the original netting was safe; much of it was consumed in the fire.)
But the contractors apparently were worried they would get caught in an inspection, he said, and installed fire-safe netting at the base of the scaffolding, where testers were most likely to take samples.
Even after the fire, the ploy seemed to work. At one point, officials said that the netting on the one building that did not catch fire met fire-safety standards. After a public outcry, more tests were conducted, at different heights, and they found the material to be unsafe, too.
How much did the company save by using the cheaper netting in the summer repairs? According to the anticorruption agency, just under $14,000.
Selam Gebrekidan is an investigative reporter for The Times based in Hong Kong.
The post What Went Wrong Before Hong Kong’s Apartment Inferno appeared first on New York Times.
