TNAG-0549-FCO40-644-Allegations-of-corruption-and-bribery-in-Hong-Kong-police-an-1975 — Page 37

EXTRACT FROM "MIDWEEK"

16.1.75:

-13-

MANGOLD:

But does Commissioner Slevin believe the legalisation of

gambling would remove corruption from his force?

SLEVIN:

Corruption is a part of the scene of Hong Kong although it's not.. to Hong Kong or the world as a whole. It's partly endemic. I would say it's quite impossible to quantify percentage-wise the extent of corruption but what I will say as far as I am concerned running a very large force, up above 19,000 including 3,000 civilians, that we have got a share of black sheep but it's by no means a part of the whole scene at all.

This is an efficient and an effective body and it serves this town very well indeed....(INTERRUPTION) There certainly are elements of corruption, the whole situation lends itself to a lot of people here are

prepared quite voluntarily to pay corrupt money.

MANGOLD:

fonce

claims that corruption in the police/is, he says,

a way of life as natural as going to bed or brushing your teeth, would you accept that, that it is or has been a way of life in this police force?

SLEVIN:

No I think...I certainly agree that in broad terms that it is partly a way of life in Hong Kong but not for completely a part of the way of life of per see by implication or influence or whatever of every man in the force at all.

Given the extent of corruption in the police force, the

MANGOLD: Governor

was forced into a drastic step. He withdrew the power to investigate graft

from the police. The police Anti-Corruption Office has been disbanded and a new organisation set up the Independent Commission Against Corruption, the ICAC. This parallel police force which has recruited its own detectives works out of a large new tower block in the city center.

Its men, rather like the FBI, are considered to be the untouchables. Graft bus ters with the power to investigate, detain, search, arrest and prosecute those accused of bribery or corruption. (TV COMMERCIAL)

Television commercials and radio jingles now exort the Hong Kong Chinese to inform on corrupt civil servants, by letter, phone or personal visit, anonymously or publically. (BACKGROUND) Three-thousand complaints have already been received, over half

involving policemen. So far, sixteen officers have been convicted and at any one time, two-hundred policemen are under investigation but so far it hasn't been a tiger hunt. Godber remains the most senior policeman accused of bribery;

the most senior convicted or an associated offence.

The man handpicked by the Governor to tame the tigers of corruption in Hong Kong is a shy, sixty-two-year-old Irishman, John Prendergast. If there remains one last chance to clean the mess up, it rests with this man. He is the leader of the untouchables, the head of ICAC's graft-busters, himself a former legend of the British Intelligence Service. Assistant Police Superintendent, Palestine Police Force. Deputy Head Special Branch, Gold Coast. Army Intelligence, Suez Canal. Director of Intelligence, Kenya during Mau Mau; Chief of Intelligence, Cyprus during Eoka. Head

Last August,

of Special Branch Hong Kong. Chief of Intelligence, Aden. the Governor plucked him from retirement and pressed him back into service as Director Operations, ICAC.

BBH