TNAG-0549-FCO40-644-Allegations-of-corruption-and-bribery-in-Hong-Kong-police-an-1975 — Page 28

EXTRACT FROM "MIDWEEK" 16.1.75:

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MANGOLD:

How much did you make...corruption, during your service

in the Hong Kong police?

MANGOLD:

MANGOLD:

Quite a lot of money...quite a lot.

I mean it ran into millions of Hong Kong dollars.

You could say that yes.

Yes. You wouldn't leap up and down and argue that.

I wouldn't argue about that.

MANGOLD:

Now let's say that you made in the region of four-million dollars, was that a lot by Hong Kong standards or a little?

Quite a lot.

Four-million bucks anywhere is quite a lot of money....isn't it marvellous, absolutely marvellous...wine, women and song all the time, best hotels, you name it I had it.

MANGOLD:

There are four major areas of activity from which the Hong Kong police receive millions of dollars in pay-offs and kick-backs. Nearly all gambling is illegal in Hong Kong yet scores of large illegal casinos flourish. The police turn a blind eye to their existence in return for a percentage of the take. Similarly, with vice. Soliciting and brothel- keeping are against the law but prostitution flourishes by paying the police to stay away.

Hong Kong has 100,000 heroin addicts. It's also a major transit area for the world distribution of heroin and traffic that couldn't be so successful unless corrupt policemen were taking their cut too. And there are smaller but equally lucrative rackets. In Kowloon alone, there are some eighty-thousand street hawkers, the majority without licences to deal. They stay put by paying the police three dollars a day not to arrest them. One excuse offered for wholesale corruption is that there is a quality about the clannish and volatile Hong Kong Chinese that continues to defeat the British administrators. The towering banks dominate the cricket green on the heart of the island, a reminder that Hong Kong is about making money and not about British games.

The nineteenth century laissez faire economy, the un-English love of a buck, seemed to have built up the best of Bitish intentions. Hong Kong does have its own vitality and energy.

But it's a small place

on the make and corruption is contageous.

DR.L.K.DING:

The Chinese here are...do not like to deal with official people if they can avoid it and also they believe that if they want to get anything done, even though it is their legal right, the thing will be get done more quickly if they..if they give the pero concerned some gift or some money.

MANGOLD:

BBH

And indeed it is done more quickly isn't it?