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.
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
The lowest temperature in a low-lying area recorded early yesterday morning was in Miaoli County’s Gongguan Township (公館), at 6.8°C, due to a strong cold air mass and the effect of radiative cooling, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. In other areas, Chiayi’s East District (東區) recorded a low of 8.2°C and Yunlin County’s Huwei Township (虎尾) recorded 8.5°C, CWA data showed. The cold air mass was at its strongest from Saturday night to the early hours of yesterday. It brought temperatures down to 9°C to 11°C in areas across the nation and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties,
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
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