EXTRACT FROM "MIDWEEK" 16.1.75:
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MANGOLD:
sash
Some of the red/sergeants who retired, mostly to Vancouver, took with them an astonishing seventy to eighty-million dollars in corrupt pay-offs, the money being either being transferred through phoney bank accounts or simply hand carried out of the Colony. Jack Cater, the head of the newly created Independent Commission Against Corruption, the ICAC.
JACK CATER: I think we are all aware of the fact that there is corruption in the police force and I've said just now that it's widespread in Hong Kong and it is also widespread in the police force. This is true.
MANGOLD:
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We've heard several estimates in Hong Kong of the extent of corruption in the police force and the figure most frequently quoted is about ninety per cent of Chinese officers who have been involved in
corrupt acts and somewhere between thirty to fifty per cent of Europeam officers, now would you agree or disagree with that?
CATER: it.
As I said earlier on, I think it's difficult to be precise about All I can say yes, corruption is in the police force, it is widespread there, but it's also in other areas in Hong Kong.
MANGOLD:
But if we talk about these figures you would not necessarily disagree with them at this stage.
CATER:
I couldn't agree nor disagree with them, as I say yes widespread and this is appreciated and understood by the police force themselves.
MANGOLD: Hong Kong's Wan Chai (phon.) district, just one of the big police pay-off areas, a paradise of drugs and vice, a graveyard for honesty. In the best red light tradition, the threadbare glitter of the sub-Soho girlie bars beckons the well-heeled tourist and sailor for an evening of neo beer and negotiated love. (BACKGROUND) It's big business, especially for the policeman prepared to ignore the soliciting and the brothel-keeping.
was
a divisional police superintendent in Wan Chai in charge of all uniformed police and CID for four fertile years. What did a posting like that mean to a corrupt copper?
The value of a posting to Wan Chai is like...or could be equated with being allowed the free run of the bank...vaults of the Bank of England with a half-a-dozen suitcases for about a period of two years which is the normal posting period. Everything pays off and when I say everything I mean gambling, there...when I was there there were eight large gambling casinos each paying twenty-thousand dollars a day. There was 147 girlie bars all paying...a hundred- and-thirty some odd boarding houses and when I say boarding houses I mean brothels. It's just a cover for a brothel. They operate licence by Covernment or pay the police. (BACKGROUND)
on
MANGOLD:
Illegal hawking pays the police too. In the Kowloon area alone, they take some seven-hundred-thousand pounds a month from the unlicenced street traders jammed into one of Hong Kong's most densely packed areas. Ian Strachan is the City district officer for Wan Tai (phon.) where six-hundred- thousand Chinese live and work and buy their food from the street stalls. The stall holders who have no licences pay three dollars a day to corrupt policemen to leave them alone. That payment must be passed on to the customer just like any other tax,
BBH
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