A Taiwanese court yesterday sentenced a former navy captain to 15 years in prison for taking bribes in a controversial deal to buy French frigates in 1991.
Kuo Li-heng (郭力恆), then working for the Navy’s submarine building project, was convicted of accepting US$17 million in kickbacks from arms dealer Andrew Wang (汪傳浦) to facilitate the deal, the Taipei district court said.
His brother, Kuo Wen-tien (郭問天), received a two-year jail term for helping him launder the ill-gotten money by opening bank accounts in Switzerland, the court said in a statement.
The court in June cleared six former navy officials of corruption charges in the same deal as there was not enough evidence to prove they made illegal gains from the acquisition.
The cases stemmed from a 1991 deal struck by Taiwan to buy six French-made Lafayette-class frigates for US$2.8 billion — a deal that severely strained France’s relations with China at the time.
A French judicial probe opened in 2001 to investigate claims that much of the money paid by Taiwan a decade earlier went towards commissions to middlemen, politicians and military officers in Taiwan, China and France.
Taiwan’s highest anti-graft body concluded in the same year that as much as US$400 million in bribes may have been paid throughout the course of the deal.
Allegations of bribery emerged after the body of the officer who ran the Taiwanese Navy’s weapons acquisitions office was found floating in the sea off the nation’s east coast in 1993.
Further suspicions arose when Swiss courts discovered US$520 million in accounts held by Wang.
Wang was allegedly tasked with convincing Taiwan to buy the ships and is the main suspect in the case, but remains at large.
In May, a Paris-based court of arbitration ordered French group Thales, formally Thomson-CSF, to compensate Taiwan for unauthorized commissions in the deal.
Meanwhile, a Taiwanese businessman was facing US prison time for illegal exports of banned missile, drone and other military parts to Iran.
Chen Yi-lan (陳宜蘭), who was to be sentenced in Miami yesterday, pleaded guilty in May to conspiring to violate the US embargo against Iran and attempting to export dual-use equipment to Iran.
The charges carry maximum 20-year sentences, but Chen likely will get less prison time under federal guidelines.
Chen was arrested in February in Guam in the midst of a one of at least 30 banned transactions to Iran since 2007.
Officials say he falsely claimed the Iran-bound shipments were destined for Hong Kong or Taiwan.
Some shipments involved engines that can be used in unmanned drones.
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
RSS