TNAG-0549-FCO40-644-Allegations-of-corruption-and-bribery-in-Hong-Kong-police-an-1975 — Page 29

EXTRACT FROM "MIDWEEK" 16.1.75:

-5m

DING:

Oh it is, that is the thing. Now, because of that I feel for until very recently most of the people in Hong Kong became sort of very apathetic and became quite indifferent to the whole question of...whole problem of corruption. (BACKGROUND)

MANGOLD:

Three years ago,

was stationed here running Sham Shipo(phon.) police station in Kowloon. It was, he says, a particularly profitable posting for kick-backs and pay-offs. In fact, Hong Kong police officers even bribe each other to get a lush posting.

I am talking now of superintendent level. A lucrative division would fall vacant and there'd be quite a number of officers who were interested in going to the division and overtures would be made through maybe a third or fourth party, usually through the staff sergeant to the officer who had a say in the posting.

MANGOLD:

And what's the going rate for a good posting?

From a superintendent to a good division? A hundred-thousand

dollars or ten-thousand pounds.

MANGOLD:

That would ensure that he had what,,two years? Although British officers are nominally in charge of the force, the centers of corruption have been around the senior Chinese NCOs. (BACKGROUND)

One administrative system, now abandoned as a failure, was the creation of an RSM type position known as the staff sergeant or the red sash sergent.

claims most of these key men were the organisers and paymasters for police corruption.

This system worked but there were two staff sergeants to a division, one uniform branch one for CID.

?

Both officers paid huge sums of money to acquire these posts because they were the most lucrative posts in divisions. "A CID staff sergeant's daily take in a division would be somewhere in the region of forty to fifty thousand dollars a day.As a divisional superintendent when I arrived at a division or as a superintendent to CID I arrived in charge of the job and I interviewed the detective staff sergeant and I said right I am in charge of this organisation you know and I know there's maybe something like three-hundred different addresses in one division involved in some type of vice and I would like what sixty, seventy, eighty, a hundred thousand dollars a month. And we had a little argument because detective staff sergeants always argue you know, if they give you a hundred dollars they've put ten-thousand in their own pocket and I know one officer who was making ten grand a day.....

I know it sounds fantastic.

MANGOLD:

Now this system was replaced in '71, does that mean that the corruption problem is over in that area?

Certainly not. What happened was that they changed the name of the rank and created more. They are now called station sergeants instead of having two you have something like ten to a division. The only effect it had on...was to im increase the price that the vice had to pay to the police. More people were sharing money, more were on the take, more had the power to squeeze from vice establishments so the Chinese are not willing to take a cut in profit so up goes the prices.

BBH