CORRUPTION.....2
Cater, a senior British civil servant with long experience in Hongkong, was picked for the post just when he was to retire from government service to take a job in private industry.
Cater will report directly only to the Governor, Sir Murray MacLehose. He will head a fairly large and well-paid staff. According to an announcement in local newspapers,
a senior official in this Commission will get as much as £750 per month, with a promise of a generous gratuity at the end of his service.
Local civic bodies and the press have welcomed the decesion that the independent commission will be totally free from any control of the Police Department.
Until the government announced the move late last year, all graft cases were handled by the Anti-Corruption branch of the Police Department. And it was the Police Department which was and still is the main target of public criticisms.
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The demand for separating the Anti-Corruption branch from the Police Department turned into a public outcry when Police Superientendent Peter Godber left the colony last May for his home in England while a corruption inquiry was going on. The Superientendent has not been charged with any offence by the Hongkong authorities.
The decision to set up the anti-corruption commission as an independent body, announced in early October, came as a direct result of a one-man judicial commission set up in June under a senior judge, Sir Alastair Blair-Kerr.
The judge's report painted a dismal picture of rampant corruption within the public service and named government departments, ranging from the police to public works, which suffered from a tarnished image.
Although the report did not categorically suggest that the Anti-Corruption branch should be separated from the Police Department, it left no doubt that such a move would certainly help to achieve results in the fight against graft. In effect, the report put more stress on the need for sweeping changes in the existing Prevention of Bribery Ordinance to give the authorities necessary powers to investigate suspects, to probe their financial affairs, including their bank accounts, and to force suspects to give details of their assets.
The Judge went as far as to recommend the immediate freezing of bank accounts of suspects, without any court order, and confiscation of travel documents of an accused even before he has been formally charged in a court of law. The recommendations contained in the Blair-Kerr report were immediately
accepted by the government as the basis for new legislation.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption thus goes into action with extensive powers never before enjoyed by a government department in any
British territory in the past.
GN 1314/2
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