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Former Governor Chris Patten said he had ordered a police investigation following rumours in May 1996 that tycoon Victor Li Tzar-kuoi had been kidnapped.

 But the inquiry had 'yielded no information', he said.

 Mr Patten, speaking after his arrival yesterday, said an agreement was needed on the exchange of fugitives with the mainland.

 The Government had spent years trying to negotiate a deal with Beijing, Mr Patten said.

 'We got nowhere,' he said. 'We're not sure whether it was regarded by our interlocutors as a big priority. They probably believed it was full of pitfalls and difficulties.

 'It's going to cause problems, not least in perception, unless it is sorted out reasonably quickly.'  Government sources said on Tuesday that police had approached Mr Li and Walter Kwok Ping-sheung - said to have been kidnapped in May 1997 - for information, but they had declined to discuss the cases. Chief Secretary for Administration Anson Chan Fang On-sang said in London on Tuesday it was the duty of tycoons as well as everyone else to report crime to the police.

 Mr Patten said yesterday: 'Let me tell you what I know about that case. I do so because I have read Mrs Chan's remarks this morning.

 'I can only think of one case, which was in 1996, and, like everybody else in Hong Kong, I heard a large number of rumours about what was alleged to have happened.

 'And not very surprisingly therefore, I asked the Secretary for Security and the police what the truth was in those stories and they made inquiries.

 'They made inquiries and came back to me and told me that they couldn't establish whether or not anything had happened. So, plainly, the difficulty in acquiring information isn't new.

 'It was observable again when I was in the last stages of my governorship that one or two people around town seemed to be travelling around the place with rather more fit-looking young men than I had.

 'But I repeat: the inquiries that I made as governor - and I wouldn't have said that had not the matter become public - the inquiries that I made quite properly as governor, which I think were followed through competently and honestly by civil servants and the police, yielded no information.' 



1996 kidnap rumour led to police inquiry: Patten