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FROM: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3244148.stm
1 Dec 2003
Book delves into frigate
scandal
By Hugh Schofield
In Paris
[TVOTW Insert - This
is an indication of the level of criminal activity for financial gain
going on with the Bush - Carlyle Group connection and the fabricated
- "war on terrorism".]
It has been one of France's
biggest political and financial scandals of the last generation.
It has left a trail
of eight unexplained deaths, nearly half a billion dollars in missing
cash and troubling allegations of government complicity.
And yet 10 years after
it first broke, the full story of the "frigates-to-Taiwan"
scandal has still to be told.
While investigating judges
in Paris have been able to uncover the secrets of a host of other "affaires",
from the Elf slush-funds to the details of President Jacques Chirac's
private travel, the Taiwan connection remains off-limits.
A government order banning
judicial access to key documents for reasons of state security has twice
been renewed, most recently in June last year.
As a result, a criminal
enquiry launched in 1997 remains stalled.
But the suspicions continue
to grow: Who has what to fear from the truth? Why, when the Taiwanese
government is doing all it can to uncover what happened, does France
stubbornly refuse to do the same?
The questions are
posed in a new book by a man who was one of France's top anti-corruption
magistrates.
'Detective thriller'
Thierry Jean-Pierre spent
two years researching "Taiwan Connection - Scandals and Murders
at the Heart of the Republic."
Reading like a detective
thriller, the story takes Mr Jean-Pierre from the study of a pipe-smoking
intelligence agent in Paris, his main informant, to the skyscrapers
of Taipei and the sands of Mauritius.
It begins in the late
1980's when Taiwan, in a state of chronic alarm about the threat from
mainland China, is seeking to upgrade its fleet.
Sensing a rare opportunity,
the then state-owned French defence electronics company Thomson teams
up with the Naval Construction Directorate (DCN) to talk the Taiwanese
admirals out of a nearly-completed contract with Hyundai of Korea.
But the admirals need
a good reason to opt for France's La Fayette class frigates, which are
still at the design stage and actually fail to meet many of Taipei's
own specifications.
That reason turns out
to be a massive commission.
Not unusual in itself
- but then the commissions start to multiply.
A three-armed lobbying
operation is put in place. A fixer called Andrew Wang, known as Mr Shampoo,
is paid to oil the wheels in Taipei.
The seductively-named
Lily Liu undertakes to buy off opposition to the deal in Beijing.
And in Paris, Alfred
Sirven, of Elf slush-fund fame, tries to influence former Foreign Minister
Roland Dumas via his girlfriend Christine Deviers-Joncour.
Strange deaths
The cost of all
this is monumental. By the time the six frigates are finally paid for,
their price had rocketed to Ffr16bn (2.44bn euros), of which nearly
a third is estimated to have been the cost of the bribes and commissions.
The question is: Where
has this money gone? About half has been identified and some of that
frozen in accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.
But that still leaves
FFr2.5bn (380m euros) unaccounted for.
According to Mr Jean-Pierre,
the obstruction of the French political establishment can only raise
one suspicion: That some of the missing
millions came back to France in the form of the famous "retro-commissions"
- the illegal rake-offs used to fund political parties and personalities
that were the stuff of a series of trials over the past 10 years.
This would be shocking
enough - but there is much more.
Since
the signing of "Contract Bravo" in 1991, Mr Jean-Pierre says
at least eight people who knew about the affair have died in suspicious
circumstances.
They start with
Yin Cheng-feng, a Taiwanese naval official who was about to blow the
whistle on the commissions. He was murdered in December 1993.
Later Yin's
nephew died an unusual death, as did a Taiwanese bank official who acted
for the naval dockyards there.
In France, an intelligence
agent named Thierry Imbot plunged to his death from his Paris flat.
He had been charged with
following the frigate negotiations for the secret service.
Deaths continue
A year later, former
Taiwan-based Thomson employee Jacques Morrison also fell to his death
from a high window.
He had told friends
he feared for his life because he was the last witness to the talks.
More than enough then
to justify a judicial investigation into what Jean-Pierre describes
as "easily the biggest politico-financial scandal of the last 10
years".
And yet in France
all efforts to cast light on the affair are stymied.
In Taiwan, by contrast,
the furore generated by the scandal helped bring down the Kuomintang
regime in 2000, and the new government has
made sure judges have access to all but the most highly-classified documents.
"The reputation
of France has been seriously stained," concludes Mr Jean-Pierre.
"And
when I compare our old democracy with Taiwan, a country where martial
law was only lifted a short while ago, I am seized by shame."
FROM: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3244148.stm
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