A
Alan Ellis: nine-year campaign
UNITED STATES Congres sional report published last Fri- day blames the British-run Hong Kong police force for the failure of attempts to stop the flow of drugs into the US and accuses thein of "leaking intelligence, and ineflici- por enforcement chey.
the American According to Narcotics Bureau, the Colony has brome the financial centre for juruational drug traffic. The
"Hong Kong connection
doned to be responsible for one End of the heroin smuggled inio the US,
is
These allegations will increase The growing pressure on Foreign metary Sir Alec Douglas-Home set up an independent inquiry o the police force which is led 567 overseas oflicers, mainly ifish. Successive British govern.
} ats have tried down repeated mands for a Royal Commission inquire into police corruption. 1. official attitude has consist
ntly been that the Hong Kong force. which was accorded the De
Royal" in 1969, is one of the best in the world.
•
a
However, it was revealed last work that one senior British 6 deer, Chief Superintendent Peter Godher had amassed fortune of £350,000 and then left the Colony while his unexplained wealth was still being investi- pated. An official inquiry into how Godber was able to leave Hong Kong and return to England as he was about to be arrested, showed that he escaped because the police blundered.
The police have not been able to prove that Godber ob. ined the money by accepting bribes and the British Foreign
:
"no
Ollice
it has says
had discussions" with the Hong Kong Administration about extraditing
Cutting dated
SUNDAY TIMES
30 JUL 1975
19
Drugs, brothels, bribery-and a British colony's police force
him back to the Colony. Mr Godber is now living at Rye,
Sussex, with his wife Jean and By Paul Eddy 25-year-old son Jan. Yesterday be sent a telegram to The Sunday in London Times regretting that he had
•
no comment to make about the and Richard Hughes vised by his Hong Kong solicitors. in Hong Kong
situation rutil he had been ad-
One
At least
other senior British officer in the Hong Kong is being force, investigated under the Colony's He has not been bribery laws. charged but has voluntarily sur- rendered his passport. joined the force in 1952, the same year as Godber, Before that, he had been a constable in Gla morgan for two years.
R JAMES JOHNSON, Labour MP for Huli West, an expert in colonial affairs, who raised the Godber case in the Commons last week, said yesterday: "There is an urgent need for an inquiry into the police, but it must be conducted from London." He has written to the Foreign Sec. retary asking him to act.
The British Government was first told about wide-scale corruption in the force in 1964. Alan Ellis, who had served 35
શ
that he had been offered
retainer" of £30 a month-equal to half his salary. Mr Ellis had not been asked to do anything specific in return for the bribe and he suspected that most-if not all-oflicers were "proposi- tioned." The bribe had been off ered by a civilian employee at his police station and Mr Ellis was told that the money had come from a senior divisional officer, a Chinese Superintendent. The offer was made, and rejected. twice.
Mr Ellis says that during his career he was discouraged" by senior officers from taking action against people who operated drug dens, illegal gambling and illegal public transport. He believes that because he took action, he was "frozen out of the force.
he passed
from the Colony's police training school he was awarded the baton of honour as the
probationary When a Inspector in Hong Kong for 18 months, came back to England and told the then Colonial Office
out
100/€
best all-round recruit." How- ever, a year later he was dis charged in the interest of the Force." The official explanation is that he was " temperamentally unsuitable."
When he returned to England in December, 1964, he asked for an interview with Mrs Eirene White, who was then a junior minister at the Colonial Office. She refused, saying that no useful purpose would be served.
10
Throughout the Sixties. Mr Elis campaigned to have a Royal Coni- mission appointed. In 1967, a Tory MP, Patrick Jenkin, now Chief Secretary to the Treasury, raised the case in the House of Commons, but Mrs Judith Heat who was then Minister of Ste in the Commonwealth Office, svid that two internai police inquities. had shown that there was truth" in Mr Ellis's allegations. In 1969. Granada. Television's "World In Action programie investigated alleged police ruption in the Colony. The gramme was called A Case To Answer." but it was dismissed in Hong Kong as "sheer ser de tionalism and a month Ler Prime Minister Harold Wi Og announced that the title "Royit had been conferred on the Force. Princess Alexandra became Com- mandant General of the Force. Last year she visited her men in
**
Britain's role in Hong Kong
HONG KONG is a British Crown Colony ruled by a Governor who appoints an Executive Council and a Legislative Council. The Colony occupies 399 square miles, most of it on the Chinese mainland. Approximately two-thirds of the Colony, known as the New Territories, is leased from China and is due to revert to Peking in 1998. The Governor, always a Briton, is responsible to the Foreign and
ny
Commonwealth Secretary for "
peace, order and good government.”
Official corruption has always been a probem in the colony, and before the days of British rule was dealt with severely, In the last century policeman convicted of taking a bribe of arre than 100 pieces of silver was sentenced to death by strangling. Hong Kong still retains the d. th penalty-but not for police bribery.
པ་ག་
сто