TNAG-0552-FCO40-647-Allegations-of-corruption-and-bribery-in-Hong-Kong-police-an-1975 — Page 193

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185

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Mr Male

PS/Lord Goronwy-Roberts

To

MP'S LETTER: MR ALAN ELLIS

1.

issue

Ace.

18%.

Sir Anthony Royle MP wrote to Lord Goronwy-Roberts on

10 July enclosing a further letter from his constituent, Mr Alan Ellis. Following Mr March's submission of 23 July, Lord Goronwy- Roberts replied on 24 July. I forwarded Mr Ellis's letter to the Independent Commission Against Corruption who sent their comments (Mr Prendergast's letter of 20 August).

2.

I submitted these on 2 September arguing that it seemed unreasonable to expect the Commission, which needs all its resources to investigate much more serious allegations on more recent corruption, to pursue Mr Ellis's case further when he had patently failed to provide evidence on which to proceed. Indeed, his efforts to identify the alleged briber in 1962 had clearly pointed to the wrong person and had wasted the Commission's valuable time. It was, of course, not surprising after 13 years that Mr Ellis should make such a mistake; but this illustrated the difficulty of pursuing his allegations after this lapse of time. I was personally doubtful, even if Mr Ellis went to Hong Kong and managed to identify his servant, whether a case could ever be made to stand up in court. I thus saw no alternative to accepting the judgment of the Commission's Operations Target Committee that every reasonable effort has been made to investigate Mr Ellis's allegations.

3. Mr Galsworthy, however, pointed out that there was little chance of bringing this correspondence to an end unless the Commission could answer Mr Ellis's question as to whether records existed indicating who was his servant at the material time. E182) I accordingly telegraphed Hong Kong again (FCO telno. 682) to ask

if the Commission could clear up this point conclusively. We have

CONFIDENTIAL

/now received