CO129-555-17 Smuggling of counterfeit coins made in China 5-12-1935 - 19-2-1936 — Page 4

I don't think it will be expedient

to base our reply to the Dutch Minister's representations

on a reference to the International Convention.

The

clause in the Hong Kong Ordinance which is quoted by

the Netherlands Minister provides a penalty for the

offence of "possessing without lawful authority or excuse

more than five pieces of counterfeit coin of a foreign

country". The provision does not require that the possessor shall know the coins to be counterfeit and have an

intent to utter them. In this respect the Hong Kong

law follows closely the United Kingdom Act of 1861 (Clause 23)

codes

in which similarly there were in effect two eins, the

one relating to offences against the King's Coinage and the

other to foreign coinage.

It is of importance to note that there

is no exactly corresponding offence provided in the United

Kingdom law for simple possession of counterfeit King's coins, but in Section 10 of the Hong Kong Ordinance and in

Section 11 of the United Kingdom Act of 1861 possession is an

offence only if the possessor knows the coins to be

and has an intent to utter them.

counterfeit and

The chief requirement of the International

Convention in this connection is (Article 5) that there shall

be no distinction in the scale of punishments for offences

relating to domestic currency and similar offences relating

to foreign currency, and in order to meet this requirement

the United Kingdom law has been revised by the Counterfeit Currency (Convention) Act 1935 which has the effect (Section

3(i)) of repealing those Sections of the 1861 Act which

constituted the separate code for offences against foreign

coin