Navy official sentenced in ship procurement scandal

A former navy official who is also a suspect in the murder case of Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓) was found guilty and sentenced to seven months imprisonment by the Taiwan High Court yesterday for bribery over a survey ship procurement in 1993.

Liu Shu (劉樞), a former official at the navy's special panel charged with the purchase of survey ships, after his retirement in 1992 first took a position as adviser and later became general-manager at a company run by arms broker Cheng Cheng-kuang (鄭正光).

In April 1993 Liu and Cheng, mediating a deal for the Italian ship builder Fincantieri, allegedly offered millions of NT dollars in bribes to Yin, who had been appointed to supervise the procurement of survey ships, asking Yin to push for the Fincantieri's bid for the NT$1.4 billion contract.

Since the survey ship deal, Liu and Cheng allegedly continued to pursue under-the-table cooperation with Yin in other military procurement projects.

Yin, Liu and Cheng were also charged with bribing two navy officials to support the Italian company's bid for the survey ship procurement, which was also contended by ship builders from the US, Finland and Spain.

The court decision yesterday came amid reopened investigations into Yin's death and possible related procurement scandals. Nevertheless, the decision avoided mention of the Yin case because it is still under investigation.

The court found that in March 1993 Liu telephoned Lu Tien-fan (呂天帆), a former colleague in the navy and a member of the procurement assessment committee, offering him NT$500,000 for each member of the committee who would help the Italian company win the bid. Lu then passed the message to Yu Chih-wu (于治武), another member of the committee.

Fincantieri ultimately won the deal, which led the court to conclude Lu and Yu had respectively received NT$1,700,000 and NT$400,000 worth in bribes.

Liu, who had previously received a 14-month jail term at the the District Court in the same bribery case, was granted a reduced sentence of seven months yesterday on the ground he had confessed to the crime while it was still under investigation.

Cheng, who was also sentenced to 14 months in prison by the District Court, was found guilty of bribery but was not sentenced to prison since he turned himself in at an initial stage of the investigation.

In November 1993, the Presidential Office received an anonymous letter, in which accusations were made that Yin had received NT$5 million in bribes from the Cheng and Liu.

On Dec. 8, 1993, Yin denied the accusations and allegedly visited three people, including Liu and Cheng and secretly recorded conversations with them. The next day, Yin went missing and his body was found later in the water off Suao.

Kuo Li-heng (郭力恆), Yin's colleague at the navy and the most important witness in Yin's case, has several times said Liu was deeply involved in the mysterious case.