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The ICAC's Record
3.
It is not easy to form an assessment of what the ICAC has achieved so far. The Governor of Hong Kong told Lord Goronwy-Roberts at their meeting in the Office on 9 December last that
Sir Robert Mark, then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had congratulated him on Hong Kong's achievement in getting the better of corruption. Mr Cater has consistently stuck an optimistic note and he told me in March that things were going so well that he hoped to cut the size of the ICAC after the end of 1977. On the other hand, there have been recent Hong Kong press reports that the number of ICAC sub-offices is to be increased from 6 to 9 and we know that the ICAC is continuing to recruit UK expatriate officers. This suggests, as does paragraph 2 above, that the ICAC still has a long way to go in stamping out corruption. There is a need to clarify the extent of the ICAC's progress and the size of the job
that remains to be done.
Recent Issues
4. There have been two aspects of the work of the ICAC over the past year which have caused us concern: the effect on police morale and the protection of the rights of the individual in connection with the Commission's investigations. On the first the Overseas Police Adviser reported, after his inspection of the RHKPF in November/December last, that once an individual (a police officer or otherwise) was under investigation by the ICAC, the fact soon became public knowledge with the result that, guilty or innocent, the "suspect's" career prospects were undermined. He suggested that the "atmosphere of culpability by association" could be minimized by the Commission's using less arbitrary methods of investigation. The ICAC's answer has been that there is no possibility of making a public statement clearing a person under investigation and against whom no further action is to be taken since that would only indicate that the person had been suspected of corruption and that the evidence against him was insufficient to bring a prosecution. There have also been cases in the last two years where shortly after the end of an ICAC investigation new evidence came to light which resulted in a prosecution.
The
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