French prosecutors said yesterday that they had called for the Lafayette case, France’s biggest graft probe in 50 years, to be dismissed without trial after repeatedly being refused defense files on a 1991 warships deal with Taiwan.
The office of state prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin confirmed a report in Le Figaro newspaper saying he had requested the multibillion-dollar case to be dismissed for lack of evidence.
French judges wrapped up a five-year investigation in 2006 into alleged kickbacks paid on the sidelines of the deal, but were repeatedly denied access by the government to top-secret defense files at the heart of the case.
Writing to judges Renaud Van Ruymbeke and Xaviere Simeoni on July 24, the prosecutor said that the probe had not “brought to light the existence of retro-commissions” paid on the sidelines of the sale of six Lafayette-class frigates, according to Le Figaro.
The prosecutors said the probe had also “not enabled the beneficiaries to be identified.”
Taiwan has said as much as US$400 million might have been paid in bribes for the warships built by French defense company Thomson-CSF (now Thales).
Allegations of backhanders emerged after the body of the officer who ran the Taiwanese navy’s arms acquisitions office was found off the east coast in 1993.
Further suspicions arose when Swiss courts discovered US$520 million in accounts held by businessman Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), the main suspect in the case, who was allegedly tasked with convincing Taiwan to buy the ships and renege on a nearly clinched deal with South Korea’s Hyundai.
Taiwan is seeking damages of close to 1 billion euros (US$1.54 billion) from France before an international court of arbitration.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
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SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
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