TNAG-0410-FCO40-456-Allegations-of-bribery-and-corruption-in-the-Hong-Kong-polic-1973 — Page 9

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rite their activities in them to include the facts of contact between them

he police agent's mother, because, he said, if they became known outside the police force they could lead to very serious allegations being made.

Advice of these events came to me through a police contact and they tended to indicate truth in the substance of the advice given to Mrs Elliott through another police officer, the officer she had refused to identify. Accordingly I made a statement to the Tribunal as to the existence of these facts and their relationship to possible recall of the police agent for re-examination at the Tribunal. The two British CID officers, with

knowledge and approval at least, had been engaged

in an attempt to suborn a witness. This is a very serious offence. There is available at this stage no other evidence beyond my hearsay to support this charge. The only corroboration that could exist, if a proper investigation were ever to be conducted, would be statements of truth from the police agent's mother and from the two CID officers who visited her, from

and possibly from the police agent

himself. The present position of these witnesses I deal with below.

My statement was referred by the Tribunal to the adviser to the police, the Attorney- General and thereafter it was buried. He asked the police to investigate, this internal investigation being conducted by a very senior British CID officer now serving elsewhere. This investigator made no attempt to obtain from me any further evidence in support of the charges. The investigation was quite unnecessarily dragged on until after the Tribunal had closed. The Tribunal itself blocked attempts to have it introduc d in evidence. To my subsequent requests to the Hongkong Government to know the outcome of this dynamic investigation I eventually received the answer that I could not be told because I was not a party to the proceedings. No official explanation for the CID officers' contact with the police agent's mother has ever been given.

Unofficially I know that they stated in their statements contained in the investiation file that they were inquiring into allegations of "sex practices" allegedly involving the first public figure. The police agent's mother, however, claimed at the time when confronted by the Tribunal's solicitor and the solicitor for Mrs Elliott that the two officers, who she said she had known for some 14 years, had come to bring sweets to her sick daughter.

So there are three explanations as to the purpose of their actions: stones, which it is claimed Elsie Elliott paid to have thrown; sweets which the police agent's mother claims the officers brought her sick daughter, and the sight of two tough CID officers, detective inspectors, carrying sweets to a sick daughter of a liquor establishment proprietress is most touching; and buggery.

Will we

ever have the full truth of these matters? It would appear that one of Hongkong's most promising fiction writers, Mr Kevin Sinclair, a reporter of the South China Morning Post (and Hongkong representative of the London Daily Express)

against whom and which Hongkong newspaper I have just filed complaint in London arising from their spurious report of 7th August 1973 headed FIRED OFFICER RETURNING AS TV 'STAR', which fabrication they have ignored repeated opportunities to correct

is providing an opportunity that we might have it.

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Mrs Elliott has written a confidential letter to a British CID officer. Mr Sinclair says she threatens to launch investigations in London against this officer, who according to the SCMP and Mr Sinclair was involved in the 1966 matter with Mr Funt, according to Mr Sinclair's exclusive report in the SCMP of 9th November. Mrs Ellicit, however, says in a letter published in the SCMP on 13th November that she has thratened no such thing. One sees also from the SCMP of 13th November that the officer identified by the SCMP as being the recipient of Mrs Elliott's confidential letter has made an official complaint at Central Police Station in, reportedly, his "capacity as a tax-paying citizen".

Се

..OVER/