In Hong Kong in the early 1970s, corruption was so routine that some ambulance crews reportedly asked for "tea money" before carrying patients, and firefighters were said to want payment before turning on their hoses. Police syndicates collected regular payments from gambling dens and drug dealers. Within a decade, Hong Kong had become a byword for clean administration. How it happened is one of the most studied anticorruption stories in the world.

The Godber affair

The trigger was a single officer. In 1973 investigators found that Peter Godber, a chief superintendent of police, held assets worth several times everything he had earned in his career. Before he could be charged, a senior police officer with unexplained wealth fled to England. Public anger was intense, and students marched with the slogan "Fight Corruption, Catch Godber." The governor, Sir Murray MacLehose, responded by creating the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in February 1974. Godber was extradited in 1975, tried and sentenced to four years in prison.

The case exposed a deeper problem. The police force's own Anti-Corruption Branch had been watching Godber, and many people assumed that colleagues had warned him in time to escape. Whether or not that was true, the public no longer believed that the police could clean up the police, and that loss of trust is what made a truly independent body politically possible.

What made the ICAC different

Earlier efforts had relied on an anticorruption office inside the police, which meant the police investigated themselves. The ICAC was separate from the police and reported directly to the governor. It recruited many staff from outside, received generous funding and had strong powers to search, arrest and examine bank records.

Its approach rested on three prongs: investigation, prevention and community education. Investigators pursued cases, including against senior officials. A prevention department studied how government agencies worked and redesigned procedures that invited bribes. Community educators ran school programs, advertisements and television dramas aimed at changing what people expected of public servants.

The law helped. Hong Kong's Prevention of Bribery Ordinance of 1971 includes an unexplained wealth offense: officials must be able to explain assets beyond their official income, or face prosecution. Supporters see this as a practical answer to crimes that leave no paper trail. Critics argue that it shifts the burden of proof onto the accused, and they worry about such powers in less careful hands.

The 1977 crisis

As investigations reached deeper into the police, officers struck back. In October 1977 hundreds of police marched in protest, and some broke into ICAC offices. MacLehose then announced a partial amnesty that ended pursuit of most offenses committed before 1977, except in serious cases. Some saw a surrender. Others saw a shrewd move that drew a line under the past and gave an entire force a stake in a clean future. In collective action terms, it reset expectations all at once.

Singapore

Singapore offers a second famous case. Its Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau dates from 1952, but it gained teeth after Lee Kuan Yew's People's Action Party took power in 1959 and passed a tougher Prevention of Corruption Act in 1960. Singapore paired tough enforcement with high public salaries benchmarked to private pay, on the theory that well-paid officials have less reason to steal and more to lose. Enforcement reaches the top: in 2024 a former transport minister, S. Iswaran, was sentenced to a year in prison over gifts he had received. Critics point out that Singapore's model grew under a dominant party with limited press freedom and strong state control, and that high salaries are expensive and politically contested.

Georgia

After the Rose Revolution of 2003, the new government of the former Soviet republic of Georgia took a dramatic step. In 2004 it dismissed the entire traffic police force and rebuilt it with new, better-paid recruits, while simplifying licenses and registrations so that fewer encounters invited bribes. Surveys soon showed petty bribery collapsing. Critics note that the same government concentrated power, presided over abuse of prisoners and was accused of using prosecutions against opponents. Petty corruption fell fast; holding the powerful to account proved harder.

Worked example

Dozens of countries have created agencies modeled on the ICAC, with mixed results. A minister proposing one should ask several questions drawn from these cases. Will the agency be independent of the police and the ministries it investigates, with protected funding? Who can fire its head? Will it investigate allies of the government as readily as opponents? Without independence, such agencies can be turned against government opponents, becoming a tool of the very abuse they were meant to stop. Will the agency combine prosecution with redesigning procedures and public education, or only make arrests? And how will it handle the past: by punishing everyone, which may unite the corrupt against it, or by drawing a line, which may look like impunity? Hong Kong and Singapore show what a determined state can do. Georgia shows that one part of the problem can fall while another remains. None of the three succeeded through a law alone.