Two retired high-ranking naval officers were held incommunicado on court ruling yesterday under suspicion of corruption concerning the purchase scandal of French Lafayette frigates, which is believed to be linked to the 1993 murder of navy Captain Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓).
The two detained were former vice admiral Lei Hsueh-ming (
After lengthy questioning from early morning until 1pm, the Taipei District Court granted prosecutors' request to detain the two.
The prosecutors reportedly suspected that Lei and Wang were involved in the deliberate inflation of the budget for the Lafayette frigates by NT$20 billion.
"Their testimony differed over key questions," said Lee Chun-ti (
"And there are other accomplices not yet being questioned. Thus there is the possibility they might otherwise conspire with others and destroy evidence," Lee said.
Lei and Wang are the highest-ranking military officers detained since the investigation of Yin's murder and related arms purchase scandals was reopened by a special task force established on President Chen Shui-bian's (
Media reported that retired Commander-in-Chief of the Navy and Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Admiral Yeh Chang-tung (葉昌桐), is among the next group of former and current military officers to be subpoenaed and questioned by the special investigation force.
The special investigative force on Friday arraigned Lei, Wang, and another retired vice admiral Yao Neng-chun (
Lei and Yao were successive directors of the Navy General Headquarters' vessel construction and management office prior to Yin's murder. The office -- later renamed as the weapons procurement office of which Yin served as executive general -- had a major role in the decision to buy the French frigates.
Wang had been deputy executive general of the vessel construction and management office and later at the time of Yin's murder was navy's vessel development center in Kaohsiung.
After questioning by the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau on Saturday, Yao was released in the small hours of yesterday morning due to his cancer and need for chemotherapy, while Lei and Wang underwent continued questioning and were detained on the orders of the court.
Three days earlier, on Sept. 21, an incumbent captain, Chu Po-kang (祝伯康) was detained by military court, following the detention of retired captain Kang Shih-chun (康世淳) and former commander Cheng Chih-po (程志波) on Sept. 7, for their parts in allegedly inflating the Lafayette budget. The three middle-ranking officers reportedly denied corruption charges and claimed that they were only acting upon instructions from their superiors.
According to the military criminal code, the crime of inflating prices in the purchase of weapons more than NT$5,000 carries the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Yin Ching-feng is believed to have been murdered by corrupt naval officers for his attempt to reveal collective bribery in arms procurements. The purchase of the six French Lafayette-class frigates is one of three projects most heavily suspected to have led to his death. Two other projects are that of four German-made minesweepers and an Italian-made survey ship.
RSS