Note
bey
Sir A. Grattan-Bellew
1. A person accused of a criminal offence is entitled to know
But a person what he must prove to secure his acquittal.
charged under Clause 10 is not in a position to know what a judge or a jury will consider to be a satisfactory explanation of his maintaining a standard of living higher than is commensurate with or being in control of resources dispropor- tionate to his official emoluments. Whether an explanation appears satisfactory would, I suggest, be a matter of personal opinion and on any given set of facts one judge or one jury might come to an opposite conclusion to that of another judge or another jury.
It would not be a case of whether the accused's defence was believed or not, which is normally the issue in a
criminal trial.
2.
If there is a prima faciae case of a criminal act having been committed by a person and his only way of avoiding
conviction is to prove that he was guilty of some other criminal
However act, then he has a choice between two criminal acts.
in the case of Clause 10 the most that can be proved against an accused person, as Sir James McPetrie has pointed out, is a prima faciae suspicion that he may have committed a criminal act and this I think distinguishes cases under Clause 10, in this respect, from ordinary criminal cases.
3. I take Mr. Roberts' point regarding solicitors in Hong Kong doing little else than buying and selling property (a fact of which I was not aware). Perhaps a solution would be to leave the provision as drafted by Hong Kong but to add that privileged information obtained from solicitors should be submitted to the Attorney-General for a decision as to whether the information may be used by the prosecution or not. This would safeguard the client against a misuse of the exceptional power that is being conferred on the authorities.
I
4. The present form of Clause 3 of the Bill is a compromise which was agreed with Mr. Roberts. The original clause provided that the accepting or soliciting of an advantage without lawful
The objection authority or reasonable excuse would be an offence.
was,
the question of lawful authority could not. arise in relation to soliciting or accepting an advantage because if it is something that one has a right to, it is not an advantage: and a court would have great difficulty in construing, in the circumstances, An offence that depended what was meant by "reasonable excuse".
not on a corrupt intention, but on absence of lawful authority or reasonable excuse would be extremely difficult to administer. In December 1969, I had in mind that ordinary gifts from personal
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