Chch man fights Hong Kong’s corruption

Press, 20 October 1976, Page 10

Chch man fights Hong Kong’s corruption

Hong Kong A deep-seated hatred of narcotics trafficking has been the major factor leading a Christ-church-born lawyer into spearheading a fight in the last 10 years against corruption in the police in Hong Kong.

He is Mr Ross Penlington, who took his legal degree at Canterbury University and went to Hong Kong to join the AttorneyGeneral’s Department after service as a Magistrate in Western Samoa. He is a son of a former Christchurch lawyer, Mr C. G. Penlington; and his cousin, Mr P. G. S. Penlington, is also well-known in practice in Christchurch.

Ross Penlingtoh’s occupation perhaps could be regarded as one of the most dramatic of any lawyer in the Far East, but he himself sees nothing much unusual in what he is doing. As the years have passed, he has grown to accept that the way of life led by four million people in the crowded British colony breeds corruption in its police. In fact, Mr Penlington frankly admits that corruption has been prevalent in the Hong Kong police for years past. There are 14,000 policemen, a ratio of one to every 280 citizens. Mr Penlington believes that more than 1 per cent of the force may be corrupt.

About 600 of the total force are recruited from the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Mr Penlington said corruption was prevalent mostly among the noncommissioned officers who accept bribes for permitting vice, and then pay off their senior officers. The most dramatic of Mr Penlington’s prosecutions a few years ago received world-wide publicity. A former chief superintendent, Peter Godber, was alleged to have received SHK4.3M, (about $NZ970,000), and Superin-, tendent Ernest Hunt, another former United Kingdom officer, was alleged to have received about SHKSOO,OOO. Mr Penlington’s role at this time was as special assistant to the Attorney-General, responsible for anti-corruption. He had Hong Kong’s stern anti-corruption law to help him. The Prevention of Bribery Ordinance permits prosecution on charges' that officers have maintained a standard of living above that commensurate with their past or present income. The offence carries a maximum sentence of seven years imprisonment and a $lOO,OOO fine.

Superintendent Godber was given a sentence of four years and is now completing the- term in Ching Ma Wan Prison in Hong Kong, among many of the prisoners he helped put behind bars. Mr Penlington called at the prison and saw him recently. Godber, he said, was looking forward eagerly to his release soon. Godber’s sentence of four years for accepting a bribe of SUSSOOO was imposed in November, 1974. Mr Penlinojtnn

should be eligible for one third remission of sentence, and so should be freed about the middle of next year.

Godber is one of about six Europeans in the prison, which is classed as an “open-style” one.

At the time Godber had been arrested and charged, Mr Penlington said, a good deal of feeling had been created among the community; and this had resulted in some animosity towards the New Zealander and his family. Godber was a man of considerable stature, and to see him gaoled had been hard for people of. Hong Kong to understand. Godber’s conviction came after Superintendent Hunt turned Queen’s evidence. Hunt himself was given a year’s gaol, but served most of this time in prison while legal formalities were taking place. Then the doctors ruled he had a blood clot and could not complete the term. He is now living in Spain, and has recently written a highly dramatised account of his experiences in the Hong Kong police.

“You must realise that in this part of the world — Taiwan, the Philippines, in Singapore until recently and in Indo-China — corruption is widespread and almost a way of life,” Mr Penlington said. But corruption in Hong Kong was not as great as it had been in Saigon, for example, where it used always to cost something extra to register a car or secure an import licence. Mr Penlington said that recently he had heard of an instance of corruption which typified the problem in Indonesia. An Indonesia Air Force colonel had rented a new house in his country owned by a Hong Kong bank. The bank had decided to reopen a branch in Indonesia and had asked the colonel to vacate the

house. He had said he would do so if the bank paid him SUSSO,OOO. A complaint had gone to the Indonesian Government, but it had not seen anything wrong with the transaction.

In February, Mr Penlington was promoted to Director of Public Prosecutions with a staff of five Crown counsel. He holds primary responsibility for deciding whether available evidence is sufficient to go to court. It was Mr Penlington’s disgust with the flourishing narcotics traffic in Hong Kong that led him into the combat against corruption in the police. His own inquiries led him to the belief that many policemen were supplementing their income with payments from narcotics traffickers. Others also were obtaining bribes for permitting gambling and prostitution, vices prevalent in Hong Kong for centuries past. “There are terrible sights here in our .Magistrates’ Courts as a result of drug addiction —- imagine something like a drunks’ parade in the Christchurch Magistrates’ Court on a Monday morning, but really something infinitely worse.” If prosecutions were made, it was mainly in an endeavour to help the addict himself.

He had high praise for the work of the Hong Kong Narcotics Bureau. To be effective, the bureau’s workers must be immune from corruption, and this state of affairs applied to the 50 or .60 men in the bureau. It would take only one corrupt man in the bureau to break the chain and make information available about impending raids. This , would break the system completely. Mr Penlington said he would like to eradicate the narcotics traffic in Hong Kong completelv. but this

would never come about while corruption existed in the police.

The extent of narcotics traffic in Hong Kong was huge by any standards. A true estimate was impossible, but he believed the daily sales of narcotics in Hong Kong reached about SHKISM. Nor was any exact estimate possible of the number of addicts, but his estimate was that the number lay between 50,000 and 100,000. Mr Penlington has prosecuted many people for corruption. One case he still finds difficult to explain involved a bril--1 i a n t Governmentemployed neuro-surgeon who was charging his patients SHK2O for treatment. Yet under the social welfare system operating in the colony, such consultations were free.

Undoubtedly, many corrupt policemen have fled Hong Kong rather than face prosecution, and many are living in Taiwan. Mr Penlington said no extradition treaty existed between Hong Kong and Taiwan, and so no way of prosecuting the offenders.

His first prosecutions against members of the police were in 1967 when he prosecuted three policemen for kicking a prisoner to death. The three were convicted of manslaughter. Ross Penglington’s wife, Valerie, like her husband, is a former Canterbury University law student. She is the daughter of a Napier solicitor, Mr Weston Wacher. She enjoys her work in Hong Kong with a legal firm, which, ironically, acted as defence counsel for Superintendent Hunt, whom her husband prosecuted. Their two daughters, aged 18 and 17, are in New Zealand, the younger at Woodford House in Havelock, and the other a firstyear law student at Canterbury University.

There are a variety of reasons, obviously, for the Penlingtons’ liking for life in Hong Kong. Their living is comfortable, and, in addition to deriving great satisfaction from his week-day work, Ross Penlington enjoys going into uniform at week-ends and assuming the post of commanding officer of the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force. The unit has five aircraft — three Aloiiette Mark 111 helicopters, a twin-engine, fixed-wing Britton-Norman Islander, and a single-engine Beechcraft Musketeer. Formed in 1949, the unit has served the community by flying seriously-ill patients from outlying islands, searching for lost hikers and injured climbers, and taking doctors to remote areas of the New Territories. Other duties include flying V.I.P.s, seaching for refuge, and escaped prisoners, conducting traffic surveys, and general surveillance. Every two years and a half, the Penlingtons return to New Zealand on extended leave and live in a house they have bought at Taupo. Mr Penlington will retire from the Air Force in 18 months. He will still be under contract to the legal department of the colony,-where the retiring age is 55. There are normally extensions of service beyond that age.

He said he hoped while still active to return to New Zealand, live at Taupo, and find time for trout fishing and golf. He played golf for Nev/ Zealand Universities but in Hong Kong he finds time now to play only a limited amount of tennis and squash.