Swiss authorities on Wednesday returned US$34 million in frozen bank deposits to Taiwan that were believed to be kickbacks connected to the purchase of six Lafayette-class frigates from France in 1991, Swiss officials said.
Officials at the Swiss Department of Justice said the funds belonged to two different account holders but declined to identify them, saying only that one of them was a Taiwanese official.
The officials said that according to Switzerland's Federal Act on International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, frozen capital assets can be released to foreign governments if they are related to criminal activities.
The funds were handed over to Taiwanese officials on the condition that legal proceedings against the two people concerned would comply with human rights principles, they said.
The sum is part of a total of US$520 million that Taiwan has sought to recover from a number of frozen Swiss bank accounts belonging to several Taiwanese involved in the scandal, including fugitive arms dealer Andrew Wang (
Proceedings for the retrieval of the remaining funds are ongoing, the officials said.
Kickbacks
Wang was a Taiwanese agent for French arms supplier Thompson-CSF. He fled the country following the death of Navy Captain Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓) under suspicious circumstances in late 1993. It is believed that Yin was poised to blow the whistle on colleagues who had received kickbacks from the Lafayette deal.
Wang has been wanted by Taiwanese prosecutors on a murder charge since September 2000.
Concluding a second-phase investigation into the arms procurement scandal in September last year, a special judicial panel in Taiwan indicted Wang and his wife, Yeh Hsiu-chen (葉秀貞), as well as their four children and the Kuo brothers on charges of collecting kickbacks from the Lafayette deal.
According to the indictment, the Wangs opened more than 60 bank accounts in Europe and Asia to launder US$520 million in illicit gains from the deal.
Taiwan began to seek assistance from the Swiss government in 2001 to retrieve funds frozen in several Swiss banks.
Through a judicial aid agreement with Switzerland, Taiwanese prosecutors acquired a collection of bank files from a Swiss federal judge in November 2005. After nearly 10 months of examination of the files, Taiwan petitioned in September last year for the return of US$520 million from a total of US$730 million frozen in the Swiss banks.
Additional reporting by AP
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS