TNAG-0410-FCO40-456-Allegations-of-bribery-and-corruption-in-the-Hong-Kong-polic-1973 — Page 20

CONFIDENTIAL

Miss Kells

(341)

a coms of this should

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

FLT Graham-Harrison Esq CB Deputy Under Secretary of State HOME OFFICE

Dear Grada-Marisa

THE FUGITIVE OFFENDERS ACT

1.

go to 12 Dewton in the Altomy General's

London S.W.1

14 November 1973

353

Chambers

Des

14/11

14

Please send

copy at above and

нем р.и.

Stuart, Head of our Hong Kong and Indian Ocean Department, has been in correspondence with Brennan of your office about the double criminality rule in the Act, which has recently prevented us from sending back to Hong Kong a police officer charged under their Prevention of Bribery Ordinance. As you know, this was one of the problems for our relations with Hong Kong which was covered in the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary's minute to the Prime Minister of 20 September. Subsequently at the meeting of officials called by the Cabinet Office to consider the minute it was agreed that we would explore this question further with your Department.

2.

Рак

Brennan's initial reaction was that to change the law to catch Godber, the police officer concerned, would be very difficult. He argued that retrospective legislation, designed to catch one man, would be bound to give trouble in Parliament. Godber might anyway bolt before the legislation went through. Moreover the offence of which Godber is accused in Hong Kong - the possession of unexplained resources by a public officer is one which is foreign to the general law of this country.

3.

14/4

Our Ministers accept the force of all these arguments; and after consulting the Law Officers and the Whips, who take the same view, we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that, unless the Hong Kong Government produce evidence against Godber of a returnable offence, such as actual corruption, we can take no steps to send him back to face trial.

4.

Nevertheless, Sir Alec Douglas Home and Mr Royle have suggested that we ought now to look again at the general applicability of the double criminality rule to the dependent territories; not with a view to sending Godber back to Hong Kong, but because of the light which his case has thrown on the working of the 1967 Act. I realise that our two Departments considered the question in 1966 when the new legislation was being prepared. But having now been confronted by the full implications of the Godber case, I wonder whether, on this particular point, we may have been wrong.

CONFIDENTIAL

15.