Hong Kong berated for corruption

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33742, 15 January 1975, Page 13

Hong Kong berated for corruption

(By

DEREK ROUND,

N.Z.P.A. staff correspondent.)

HONG KONG, January 14.

Hong Kong’s leading English newspaper, the “South China Morning Post,” today urged the people of this. British colony to do everything they can to rid it of its “stinking reputation” as a gigantic den of corruption.

"For many years, while Hong Kong people accepted that widespread bribery existed, few realised the huge scale, and while repeated requests have been made to the Government for a full independent inquiry it was invariably brushed aside by people who refused to believe the reports now coming to light,” the newspaper said in an editorial.

"The German people during the last war have often ! tried to exculpate

by saying they were ignorant of the horrors of the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews, and in any case powerless to resist the dictatorship under which they lived. “Perhaps they are on stronger ground than we in Hong Kong, living as we do in a free society, who know what has been going on in our midst and have the chance and now, hopefully, the will to act.”

The editorial appeared as the “South China Morning Post” started running a series of articles about a former Hong Kong police superintendent, Ernest ’Taffy” Hunt, who served eight months of a one-year gaol sentence last year after being convicted under the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance. The series on Hunt is also appearing in the London “Daily Express.” The “South China Morning Post” published pictures of Hunt and his German-bom second wife, wearing expen-

sive fur coats, arriving in Spain and standing in front of their luxury villa there. Hunt, who was prosecuted by a Christchurch lawyer, Mr Ross Penlington, strongly protested his innocent last year and claimed that the money he was shown to have had in addition to his police salary had come from his wife and an Insurance policy. But he is quoted in the series now appearing as saying he had been “on the take” for most of his time in the Hong Kong police and had got away with millions of Hong Kong dollars. The “South China Morning Post” said that the Hunt story was certain to shock and horrify all but the most cynical and the more knowing. “It is not our task to assess his motives but to make the point that this is not just one policeman’s story or that of many policemen, or of many civil servants, but a story of the way in which.

money and the acquisition of wealth — by foul means if ‘ not by fair — has deeply cor- 1 rupted our society,” the I newspaper said. i Describing the Hunt story | as one of shame and degrada- ; tion for Hong Kong and a I triumph for a self-confessed I crook, it commented: “He I stands on the veranda of his Spanish villa, or swag- 1 gering across a tarmac in his 1 fur coat and hat with the I comfortable knowledge that i he has got away with at least five and a half million Hong . Kong dollars according to his i own testimony.” i The “South China Morning Post” declared: “The Hunt i story will be repeated many times until the people ofl Hong K ig themselves de- ; cide to bring corruption to a halt and to insist on laws that will make it impossible for the blatant exploitation of vice and crime and the relentless squeezing that goes on in this money-mad city to continue.”

An affidavit from the 45-year-old Hunt, who once headed the Hong Kong police homicide squad, was used in evidence during extradition proceedings in London last year against a former Chief Superintendent, Peter Godber, who joined the police at the same time as Hunt. Godber is now in Stanley Prison after being flown back from Britain last week to face charges of bribery and conspiracy. Hunt claims that the Attorney-General gave him a guarantee while he was in gaol that he would not be prosecuted on any other charges. The British Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Lord Goronwy-Roberts. who is here on a fact-finding visit, was today having talks with the commissioner of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, Mr Jack Cater, and the Commissioner of Police, Mr Brian Slevin.