ENG-2000 — Page 373

PUBLIC ORDER

combating the commercial exploitation of children. With a view to better protecting children in Hong Kong and overseas countries, the Administration plans to introduce two bills against child pornography and child sex tourism into the Legislative Council in 2001.

Commercial Crime

The level of serious fraud handled by the Commercial Crime Bureau (CCB) in terms of number of cases and financial losses over the year was similar to that of 1999. Serious fraud involving the use of letters of credit continued to stand out among other types of frauds as in the previous two years. In 1999, there was an upsurge in what is commonly known as 'Loco-London gold' frauds where prospective job seekers were enticed to enter deceptive or non-existent plans of investment in bullion trading. Strategic enforcement action taken with the assistance of front-line resources resulted in a substantial reduction of this type of fraud in 2000. The powers provided under the Organised and Serious Crime Ordinance were invoked to restrain around $13 million worth of assets pending the result of a court case. In another case, seven offenders were sentenced to imprisonment for up to four years. A further 63 suspected offenders are awaiting trial in other cases.

The counterfeiting of local currency and credit cards remained a concern. In spite of several high profile seizures of counterfeit local banknotes in mid-year while sums of money were being deposited at banks, the quantity of counterfeit currency that surfaced in business transactions remained very small by international standards. It did not pose a threat to the integrity of the local currency having regard to the amount of genuine currency in circulation. The CCB neutralised two rackets that produced small denominations of local banknotes by means of personal computer devices. While the incidence of counterfeit payment cards being used in local retail operations remained low compared with other major centres in the Asia-Pacific region, five counterfeit payment card encoding centres were neutralised during the year. Most of the account data used in producing the counterfeit cards originated from overseas countries.

Computer-related crimes increased by 20 per cent in 2000 after a nine-fold increase in 1998. However, the total number of cases remained small, having regard to the rapid growth in the use of computer technology and the Internet. Almost 75 per cent of the cases fell within the category that is commonly known as 'hacking'. Additional resources will be provided to enhance the Police Force's enforcement capability in handling the investigation of computer-related crimes and to further develop expertise in computer forensic investigation. There is close liaison with industry and other law enforcement agencies in combating computer crime. An inter-departmental working group, chaired by the Security Bureau and comprising members from other bureaux and law enforcement agencies, studied various areas related to computer crime during the year. Its report was released for public consultation in December.

Narcotics

In 2000, the preferences of adult and younger drug abusers had clearly diverged. While heroin remained by far the drug most commonly abused by adults, psychotropic substances such as MDMA (methylenedioxymethylamphetamine, commonly called 'ecstasy') became the drug most commonly taken by younger abusers. Also of significance was the emergence of ketamine as a substance of abuse

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