TNAG-0490-FCO40-555-Allegations-of-bribery-and-corruption-in-Hong-Kong-police-an-1974 — Page 67

RECEIVED IN

RÉGISTRY No.51

10 MAY 1974

In Confidence

Your Ref. HKK 14/17

1>1X14/3

Mr A.C.Stuart.

"Thatch Cottage."

Trehaddle. Cusgarne. Truro. Cornwall.

Hongkong and Indian Ucean Department. Foreign and Commonwealth Office. London. S.W. 1.

Dear Mr Stuart-

5th May. 1974.

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My immediate thought on learning of the arrest of Godber, <to bring about his extradition to Hongkong, was to write to you

and say this was a commendable piece of work. From my experience extradition cases are never resolved without hard toil and dogged perseverence. i hope my advice was helpful.

Reference to my earlier advice on the same matter and what was done in Shanghai pre-war time to correct the situation there as regards corruption and bribery, perhaps your Mr Prendergast may be interested in this additional information to help him with his task.

You will recali I mentioned how the Commissioner and some other senior officers were called upon to resign and some others invited to leave being near their time to go for pensions. Major F.W. Gerrard .C.1.E who had carried out the special investigations with a view to lifting the overall efficiency and solving the other problems then took charge as Commissioner. Realistic changes in administration then followed and new documentation systems were introduced. The nett result of all this produced all level records for overall efficiency and outstanding police work. The whole force worked as one team and with the full knowledge that statistics would reveal each officer's good work, also where faults and failures existed.

At the time of bringing to the notice of Major Gerrard of the earlier faults and weakmesses in documentation work,i also brought to his attention the following matter. it was a problem likely to grow and needed to be resolved.

it was general knowledge that some merchants etc, rewarded officers directly with gifts of money when good work was done. The amounts were never large, but the correct procedure was for all rewards to be sent to headquarters. It had got to be a habit for some officers to accept the gifts and use these to pay their informers. This being done to get over the "red tape" to secure money from head- quarters to pay informers. it was difricult to know what amounts were received and if these were unsolicited. I was satisfied that Large rewards were sent by the merchants to headquarters and when lawyers were involved in the police enquiries. Senior Detectives, such as was for many years managing a large force of detectives, particularly in the heart of the city and with cases coming up for trial before many different courts of those nationalities concerned, were speding too much valuable time on checking work instead of supervising it, to be able to comect flaws Hence the need to resolve this problem of gifts of money and payment of informers.

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