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saw to that. But, whether or not Godber's refusal to surrender his passport would have been sufficient to cause the magistrate to issue his warrant seems doubtful. I suppose it would have depended on whether or not the police found themselves in a position to inform the magistrate, by affidavit or otherwise, that they could prove, up to the hilt, that Godber was in control
of financial resources totalling over 4.3 million; and that it
appeared that about two-thirds of this sum was acquired by him
during the last few years; and that this was the total of a
series of large sums in bank accounts in various other parts of
the world in the joint names of Godber and his wife; that Godber
knew the strength of the prosecution case against him; that he
had not yet answered the Attorney General's letter; and that there
was no known reason why he should want to use his passport.
Godber might have chosen to surrender his passport
to the magistrate. That would, perhaps, have been the best way
of satisfying a court that he had no intention of departing from
Hong Kong. On the other hand, having regard to the low figures
fixed by the courts for bail over the years, Godber might well
have chanced his luck by refusing to surrender his passport and agreeing to any sun the court cared to fix. Supposing the court
had fixed bail in the sum of $250,000 hard cash - a most unlikely
event would that have deterred Godber from departing from
Hong Kong? Not for a moment. He could have drawn a cheque on
his Hong Kong bank account for this amount; and even if the court
forfeited his bail, he would still have had left over $4 million.
The grant of bail by the courts in serious cases of corruption is fraught with the greatest dangers. I shall have more to say on this topic in my second report.
If Godber had attempted to pass through Immigration
Control, I imagine that the police would have invoked the
procedure laid down in scction 18, and any amount of bail that
the court was likely to fix would have been quite ineffective as
regards ensuring Godber's continued presence in Hong Kong. But, presumably, surveillance would then have been ordered, and security at Kai Tak would have been rigorously enforced.