It sounds like a Hollywood movie. A respected Hong Kong financial magnate allegedly plans a clandestine meeting with the president of Chad in the middle of the dusty Sahara Desert, and offers him a $2 million gift to secure oil rights for a Chinese conglomerate.

In another scheme, Chi Ping Patrick Ho, according to United States prosecutors, sends the now foreign minister of Uganda, who was then the president of the UN General Assembly, a $500,000 bribe for business advantages, through the New York banking system.
All this was allegedly planned under the noses of the world’s top diplomats in the corridors of the United Nations in New York, where Ho ran an energy NGO.
In November 2017, Ho and Cheikh Gadio — the Senegalese failed presidential candidate and former foreign minister, who allegedly arranged the deals — were arrested in New York on multiple bribery and money laundering charges. This week, the trial date was set for November 5, 2018. Aged 68 years old and in ailing health, Ho risks spending his remaining years behind bars. He has pleaded not guilty.
This case, however, is about more than one man’s spectacular fall from grace. It offers a rare window into Chinese corruption in Africa — something academics, politicians and business people have long suspected existed but found difficult to prove.
What’s more, with the mountain of evidence seemingly against the defendant, legal experts are wondering whether Ho might be asked to expose other corrupt parties to reduce his sentence.