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over $100 million. New legislation on fringe foreign exchange trading, in the form of the Leverage Foreign Exchange Trading Bill, was put before the Legislative Council. Upon enactment of the Bill, the Commercial Crime Bureau will be able to resolve this longstanding and difficult problem.
In April, the Computer Crimes Ordinance was enacted and a special section was established in the bureau to investigate the new offences created by the ordinance. For the first time, hacking and damaging computers or their software became offences. This brought Hong Kong into line with other jurisdictions.
During the year, the Counterfeit and Forgery Division was successful in combating both the manufacture and use of forged credit cards, and the production of counterfeit currency. In one case, a major international forged credit card syndicate was neutralised in an operation involving Hong Kong, European and North American law enforcement agencies. In another case, a raid on a printing workshop yielded counterfeit US$100 notes with a face value of over US$7 million.
Narcotics
The territory continued to suffer from its relative proximity to the production area in the Golden Triangle, which accounted for almost 70 per cent of the world's total output of opiates.
The year saw an abundant supply of (almost exclusively) No. 4 heroin in the local market, the price and purity of which continued to show a downward trend. By the year's end, the purity was 41.36 per cent, compared to a high in the early 1990s of more than 70 per cent. The retail price was approximately $332 per gram.
Some 269.15 kilogrammes of opiate drugs, comprising opium and No. 4 heroin, were seized, compared with 611.99 kilogrammes in 1992. There were 12 600 arrests for narcotics offences, compared with 9 600 in the previous year.
Heroin remained the major drug abused by more than 90 per cent of the total addict population. Although also popular with young persons, increases were noted in cough mixture abuse (up 25 per cent) and cannabis abuse (up 23 per cent). Continuing the trend of the last few years, there were also increases in the number of young persons arrested for drug offences. They comprised almost 19 per cent of the total drug arrests during the year.
Narcotics enforcement recorded a productive year, with noticeable successes against local distribution syndicates, particularly heroin-cutting centres. Successes in 1993 included the neutralisation of 30 such facilities, as well as seizures of 72.91 kilogrammes of heroin.
In August 1992, Section 25 of the Drug Trafficking (Recovery of Proceeds) Ordinance, which contains the offence of 'assisting another to retain the benefit of trafficking', was overruled by a High Court Judge. The section was considered inconsistent with Article 11 of the Bill of Rights Ordinance. In May 1993, the Privy Council of the House of Lords reversed that decision. The total amount of assets seized by police since the enactment of the ordinance was HK$145,460,359.
Crime Prevention
The Crime Prevention Bureau continued to promote the principles of crime prevention through public awareness programmes and the provision of professional advice to the community. The security of high-risk premises, particularly banks, was accorded high priority, followed by domestic security and vehicle-related crime.
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