Legislators called yesterday for tougher laws against illegal debt collecting and better regulations on the operations of money lenders after the police said legal changes might be needed to handle these areas effectively.
The lawmakers' call came after the police recorded a 24.4 per cent increase in criminal intimidation cases last year. Of the 1,424 cases, 411 were debt-related. The police recorded 1,145 cases in 2004.
'At the moment, there are no laws governing debt-collection activities and we rely on other crime ordinance and laws to monitor these acts,' Police Commissioner Dick Lee Ming-kwai told legislators. 'According to the trends of the last two years, these kinds of cases might not fall. We'll liaise with the Security Bureau to see if legislative measures or policies are needed to step up our efforts.'
Harassment by debt collectors sparked 20,610 police reports last year. Of these, 2,365 contained criminal elements such as damage, assault, arson and intimidation.
The police said they had revised their methods of handling these reports to cope with present trends.
Instead of letting criminal investigators take over all debt-collection-related cases, the detectives would now focus only on those that involved criminal elements and leave the rest to other units.
