Your leaders and letters speculating about why Australia's justice minister has refused to extradite two people on corruption charges arising out of a building contract, are wide of the mark.
I suspect he refuses to extradite the two because he believes that corruption in the construction industry in Hong Kong is so common, yet so few are ever brought to court, that it would be unfair, in these two cases, to extradite them. Obviously,he cannot say that openly.
In this connection I quote a letter I wrote to your newspaper in March 1994: 'I have seen reports that the committee, set up recently to review the powers of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), will be required to examine those powers to see if they remain appropriate, necessary and sufficient. Such an examination is needed but an equally important issue that requires action is the failure of the ICAC, since its founding, to use the powers that it already has to root out corruption in government contracts for building works and for the supply of goods and services.
'Section 12(d) of the ICAC Ordinance requires the commissioner to examine the practices and procedures of government departments and public bodies, to facilitate the discovery of corrupt practices and secure the revision of methods of work or procedures which may be conducive to corrupt practices. The ICAC's corruption prevention department, which is responsible for implementing this sub-section of the ordinance, has concentrated its efforts on the second part of this requirement, the examination and revision of procedures, and ignored the first, the examination and discovery of corrupt practices.
'The ICAC's operations department normally acts only on complaints received. With government contracts, complaints are rare because corrupt deals are known only to the two satisfied parties involved. Revising procedures may reduce corruption to some extent, but procedures cannot cover everything if efficient administration is an objective.' The letter concludes: 'To overcome this lacuna in the fight against corruption, the corruption prevention department should give priority to examining how government officers exercise their discretion and decide on the tendering for and enforcement of government contracts. If they discover a prima facie case they should pass it to the operations department for investigation. Failing that, much of government corruption will remain undiscovered.'
R. B. BLANCHE, Tai Tam
