香港總督府
Your ref: PJYAFH
MKD 986/1
Des Picker,
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
HONG KONG
27 April 1989
Sir S K Tang's £1 Million Gift to HMG
PL. ente: and itun
i me
I refer to your letter of 23 February seeking my help in obtaining some papers which could serve as evidence of Sir S K Tang's £1 million gift to HMG.
Apart from the letter of 12 March 1986 from Sir David Akers-Jones, then Chief Secretary (Annex A), we do not seem to have the papers you asked for. I have consulted the Attorney General's Chambers for advice on whether those papers are indeed necessary and whether any of the enclosures on our file would be of use to you.
Our legal advisers assume that the difficulty your advisers have in mind is in determining whether the essential requirements for the creation of a charitable trust have been
satisfied. There must be certainty of intention on the part of the donor, which cannot be inferred from Sir S K's letter of 10 March 1986 alone.
Hence we have obtained a copy of Sir S K's will and codicil from the Probate Registry (Annex B) which you may wish to pass to your Legal Advisers for information. There is no mention of the gift in the will although clause 5 requires Sir S K's trustees to:
helpful:-
(1)
'pay
any donations which I
have committed during my
lifetime but not yet paid out.'
You may also find the following papers
a minute from the Chief Secretary's Office to Government House dated 23 June 1986 recording the handing over of a cheque of HK$11,685,500 by Sir S K to the Chief Secretary (Annex C);
C8415
AGT: