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.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats