140 HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL — 21st October 1970.
[THE ATTORNEY GENERAL] Prevention of Bribery Bill-second
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Director to issue a warrant to a police officer to enter and search an office of a public body, if he has reasonable cause to believe that it contains evidence of an offence under the bill.
Clause 18 empowers a magistrate to require a person under investigation, who is about to leave the Colony, to furnish bail or to commit him to prison until he does so, for up to 28 days. An appeal will lie against such an order and proceedings under the clause will take place in Chambers, since this will avoid publicity which may damage the suspect's reputation at this stage. The object of this clause, of course, is to prevent a suspect from escaping from the Colony as soon as he realizes that his conduct or his affairs are under investigation.
Part IV deals with matters of evidence. Clause 19 provides that it shall not be a defence to show that the giving or receiving of an advantage is customary in Hong Kong in the particular trade or business concerned. Clause 21 is similar to section 12 of Chapter 215 and enables evidence of unexplained pecuniary resources to be given on a charge for any offence under Part II. Such evidence may then be treated as tending to support evidence that an accused accepted a bribe or accepted it as an inducement or reward.
Clause 22 modifies the common law rule whereby a court is required to have specific regard to the danger of convicting a person on the evidence of an accomplice, without corroboration. This rule has developed, in practice, to a point at which courts have become very reluctant to convict on the uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice. This clause seeks to modify this practice, to the extent that, for the purposes of the rule, one party to a corrupt transaction shall not be regarded as an accomplice of the other party in a prosecution against the latter for an offence under the bill. This does not mean that there is any obligation on the court to believe the evidence of that other party to the bribe, but merely that the court will have to decide whether or not, in the particular case, such a witness is worth of belief, the fact that he might be an accomplice being disregarded.
Clause 23 empowers a court, at my request, to inform a person who has committed an offence under Part II that he will not be pros- ecuted if he gives full and true evidence. It is not uncommon in criminal cases to call a party to the crime as a witness, rather than to charge him with the offence. As a general rule, a witness is not com- pelled to incriminate himself and in a case where this seems likely judges often expressly inform the witness of this. Unfortunately, such a warning may well deter the witness from giving evidence at all. This clause therefore provides for a specific assurance to such a witness that he will not be prosecuted if he gives full and frank evidence.