After 12 years as Hong Kong's chief prosecutor, Grenville Cross will be remembered more for the cases he did not prosecute than for those he did.
His record term as director of public prosecutions (DPP) began with controversy over the non-prosecution of publishing tycoon Sally Aw Sian in 1998 and ended with the recent row over a decision to grant diplomatic immunity to the wife of Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe. In between, he personally made the call not to prosecute former financial secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung.
These decisions and others brought allegations from critics that political considerations had swayed the Department of Justice. But reflecting on his term as top prosecutor, one which coincided with Hong Kong's period of adjustment to the one country, two systems arrangements, the 58-year-old British lawyer said he had no regrets.
'Every decision I have made has been on the basis of strict prosecution policy. Looking back, I don't regret a single decision. If I had to make any of those decisions again, I would make the same decision,' he said.
Cross, who stepped down as DPP last month, said he had been surprised by the hostility with which some decisions on prosecutions had been greeted. 'People sometimes attributed bad motives to us for what I know to be unjustifiable reasons. There were controversies about prosecutorial decisions before 1997, but the level of suspicion which has existed in some quarters has surprised me,' he added.
The veteran government lawyer shed fresh light on the Aw controversy. He also said he was open to the idea of shifting the responsibility for independent decisions on prosecutions from the secretary of justice to the DPP, as has recently been done for most cases in Britain.
But when he looks back on the last 12 years, Cross recalls that but for a 'twist of fate' he would not have been DPP at all. He grew up in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, before studying law at Southampton University and becoming a barrister in 1974.