132 HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL-21st October 1970.
[THE ATTORNEY GENERAL] Prevention of Bribery Bill-second
reading
cleaner than that of most of them. But even if this be so, corruption does exist here to an extent which not only justifies, but demands, that the utmost efforts be made to eradicate it from our public and business affairs.
We are faced here with a formidable task. As society has become more complex, and as the governmental machine has steadily encroached into fields formerly left unregulated, so have the opportunities for bribery increased. Nor must we discount the formidable effect of the traditional belief, which is widespread in Asia among ordinary members of the public, that it is customary, and not even particularly objection- able, to pay money to a public servant, sometimes to secure a favour, and sometimes merely to thank him for doing what it is no more than his duty to do. And I should like to remind those who talk of corrup- tion as if it were always the fault of the public servant, that to the willingness of members of the public to pay bribes must be attributed much of the responsibility for the present situation. In this respect it is, perhaps, of interest to note that in the past two years, there have been more convictions of members of the public for corruption than there have been of members of the public service.
Those whose task it is to prevent, investigate, or prosecute cases of corruption have long considered that the present law is inadequate in that it confers insufficient powers of investigation and makes the proof of offences too difficult and technical. Accordingly, in 1968, the Govern- ment instituted a detailed study of the present law. As the legislation of Singapore and Ceylon (both of which have had to face serious corruption problems) contained provisions which might, it was thought, be of value to us, visits were made to these countries, to find out exactly how their anti-bribery laws worked in practice.
Thereafter, a Working Party was established to consider amend- ments to the present Prevention of Corruption Ordinance (which I will refer to as Chapter 215) in the light of the knowledge which was gained from these visits. The Working Party expressed the opinion that, if corruption was to be successfully countered here, new legislation was imperative and put forward a draft bill, which was referred to the Advisory Committee on Corruption (under the chairmanship of Sir Cho-yiu KWAN). This Committee, which has great experience of the problem in Hong Kong, endorsed the bill, with a number of suggestions for amendment, which were embodied in it, and this bill (which I will call the 1969 bill) was published last year, with an invitation to members of the public to comment on its provisions.
At the same time, it was circulated to the Hong Kong Bar Associa- tion, the Law Society of Hong Kong, the Exchange Banks Association