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91
Ms W A Wyver
Hong Kong Department
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
LONDON SW1A 2AH
Your reference
Our reference
9 December 1993
Date
Der Weath
Де
NEGOTIATION OF A UK/HKSAR AGREEMENT ON MUTUAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE (MLA): RECORD OF MEETINGS ON 12 AND 23 NOVEMBER 1993
3
Thank you for your letters of 19 November and 2 December which I have discussed with Sally Evans. I am sorry that I have not replied sooner.
2. Mrs Evans and I are content with your record of the above meetings, save that I shall be grateful if you would replace the last sentence of the main paragraph on Article XIX on page 7 of the record for 23 November with the following, which more precisely reflects what I said: "Mr Sonnenberg said that the Home Office was wanting to negotiate more all-crimes confiscation agreements. To have an MLAT with the HKSAR containing detailed confiscation provisions on drugs in a protocol would be as much as, possibly more than, could be expected at this time and would provide a basis for wider confiscation provisions later".
3. As far as Article I is concerned, Mrs Evans and I now feel that we should not at this stage try to ensure that paragraph 1 does not apply also to offences committed outside the UK or the HKSAR over which our respective courts might have jurisdiction. Arguably, the draft Treaty includes sufficient safeguards (eg in Article IV) for us to be reasonably satisfied that we would not be obliged to assist with criminal proceedings of an extraterritorial nature conducted in circumstances which we might feel were objectionable or oppressive. Instead, in the negotiations we should seek clarification on the intended territorial application of the Treaty and only if we then have reason to be concerned seek modification of paragraph 1.
4. On Article II, we recommend that the "UK Central Authority" be defined as the Home Office, rather than the Secretary of State. This would overcome any suggestion that the Secretary of State should personally have oversight of requests for assistance. We need not, at this stage, consider how the Central Authority should be defined if the MLAT were extended to any of the Crown Dependencies. This would be a technical matter for consideration at the appropriate time in the context of new Article XXI, on territorial application.
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