With these witnesses and mounting material evidence,
investigators started to prepare for Godber's extradition.
Godber fought against being returned to Hong Kong to face trial,
denying that he had committed the alleged offences. After several
hearings, the ICAC finally won the case and obtained an extradition
order from the London court, ending an eight-month court battle.
With the London court order, Godber was taken aboard a plane and escorted back to Hong Kong on January 7, 1975 under exceptionally tight security. He was ordered to face trial at the Victoria District Court on February 17. The Government, for the first time, appointed a leading counsel from UK to act as the prosecutor in the trial - demonstrating the importance being attached to this case and the Government's determination to combat corruption.
Godber was charged with one count of conspiracy and one
count of accepting a bribe. Convicted in the six-and-a-half-day
trial, Godber was sentenced to four years' imprisonment - and the
HK$25,000 he took as a bribe was ordered to be confiscated.
Ti-liang Yang, who was the presiding judge in the Godber case, said, "In this case, the maximum jail terms for the two offences Godber committed were five and seven years, respectively. When meting out the sentence, consideration was given to the year he had already spent in prison in England, so the actual prison term imposed on Godber was quite close to the maximum penalty." Godber appealed against the sentence to the Full Court of the Supreme Court in Hong Kong and subsequently to the Privy Council in London but both appeals were dismissed, landing the once prominent figure in the Police Force in jail to pay a high price for his corrupt deeds.
The ICAC later filed a writ to try to recover, through civil
proceedings, the $4 million in assets suspected to be corrupt
income. Despite difficulties encountered in seizing assets
spread across several continents, the ICAC still has not given
up the hunt for those missing millions.