عالم
DRAFT SPEECH BY HON NGAI SHIU KIT, OBE, JP LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 6.7.88
Complex Commercial Crimes Bill 1988,
MR. NGAI:
Sir,
With the rising status of Hong Kong as an international
commercial and financial centre and increasing sophistication in business transactions, the time has come for the existing legal
system to adjust itself to deal with commercial crime cases of an
unusually complex nature. I believe that even without the recent
experience gained from the Carrian trial, we should not fail to
appreciate the numerous problems and high costs that may
accompany the prosecution and trial of complex commercial crimes,
which have already begun to emerge in the seventies.
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Public concern in the issue has given rise to a series
of developments, including, inter alia, the publication of the Trial of Commercial Crimes Bill in mid-1985, the appointment of the Select Committee on the Problems Involved in the Frosecution and Trial of Complex Commercial frimes in end-1985, the
publication of the Select Committee's report in July 1986, the
publication of the draft Complex Commercial Crimes Bill 1987, and
the present Bill. All these developments, I submit, reflect the Administration's determination to tidy up and streamline the
procedures involved in the prosecution and trial of complex
commercial crimes cases.
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Regarding the present Bill, I do feel strongly, as both
a tax payer and a legislator, that it should serve to shorten the duration and reduce the cost of the trial while preserving the common law spirit of our judicial system. To strike a balance between cost-effectiveness and justice is no easy job. In this connection, I think we ought to give special credit to the Bar
Association and the Law Society and all other organisations for
taking great pains to study the White Bill and the present Bill and contributing to the discussion of the Legopa Hoc Group.
Lyislative Cormeil
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