The record is public, and it runs 60 million pesos.
A video published by Revista Semana shows a senior executive of China Harbour Engineering Company Limited (CHEC) — part of the consortium building Bogotá's Primera Línea del Metro — receiving that sum in cash from a subcontractor. The bills arrived in packets of five million pesos each, according to the report. The alleged purpose: to authorize a payment on a construction invoice that had been held up for weeks.
The invoice in question, corresponding to work performed in March 2026, was valued at between 1,000 and 1,200 million pesos. According to the complaint reported by national media and highlighted by city councilman Andrés Barrios, the document had cleared every required approval except the final signature of the general manager. The Fiscalía has been named in a criminal complaint identifying two individuals: Wang Chuang and a director identified as Yang.
The Empresa Metro de Bogotá (EMB) confirmed it learned of the incident before the story was published. After an internal review, it concluded that the implicated individual is a CHEC executive, not an EMB employee. The entity stated plainly that the alleged act occurred within the contractor-subcontractor relationship, and that no public funds were directly involved. The EMB said it has notified the Multilateral Bank and placed all relevant documentation at the disposal of investigators.
The entity also noted that the project — described as the most significant infrastructure undertaking in Bogotá's history — has surpassed 80 percent completion, and that its financial progress is not affected by the alleged bribe.
The city council moved quickly. Councilman Juan David Quintero of Nuevo Liberalismo demanded the immediate preventive suspension of the CHEC executive, calling on both the EMB and Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán to press the company for action. 'Not even a single suspicion of corruption can stain the most important work in Bogotá,' Quintero said on the record. Councilman Andrés Barrios of Centro Democrático announced a formal motion for a political oversight debate, asking the district to explain what supervisory mechanisms exist and whether they failed.
'Bogotá has waited more than 80 years to make its Metro a reality,' Barrios said. 'We cannot allow corruption to tarnish the city's most important infrastructure project, nor allow the resources of Bogotanos to be used as a petty cash fund.'
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Follow the incentive, not the press release. The EMB's insistence that public funds were not directly touched is technically defensible — the cash changed hands between a private contractor and a subcontractor. But the distinction matters less than it first appears. When a key executive on a publicly funded megaproject can allegedly hold an approved invoice hostage until a bribe arrives, the cost lands somewhere: in delayed payments, inflated subcontract prices, and the quiet erosion of every oversight mechanism the city put in place.
Bogotá deserves a metro built on transparent contracts and enforceable rules — not on envelopes of cash. The council's demand for suspension is the right instinct. The Fiscalía now has the file. What happens next will say more about the city's institutions than the video ever could.
