Former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) filed a defamation suit against several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday who had accused him of taking kickbacks in connection with the purchase of Lafayette frigates.
Hau's lawsuit, filed at the Taipei District Court yesterday afternoon, names DPP legislators William Lai (
Hau said he loathes arm dealers and never dealt with one. He said he does not know Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), the agent for Thomson-CSF (now known as Thales), the French company that sold the frigates to Taiwan, or Liu Li-li (劉莉莉).
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Lee has claimed that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) used Liu to distribute US$100 million to officials in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People's Liberation Army, including former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (
Lee has said that Liu, whose father is a general, regarded Hau as her second father.
Hau also dismissed allegations that he received kickbacks from the ship deal and that he has overseas bank accounts.
DPP lawmakers have hinted that Hau signed a secret deal with France to leak confidential information about the frigates to China.
Hau said yesterday that he did not have the power nor channels to make contact with Beijing at the time of the sale.
He said he was out of the military in January 1990, when France first suspended export of the frigates, and that he left the premier's office in February 1993, while the deal was sealed on June 4, 1993.
Hau did admit, however, to asking the navy to consider buying the Lafayettes after he visited France in 1989. However, then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) had the final say on the matter, he said.
Meanwhile, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Joanna Lei (雷倩) held a news conference during which retired rear admiral Wang Chin-sheng (王琴生) announced that he would file a slander suit today against President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), DPP legislators Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) and Shen Fa-hui (沈發惠), as well as Yeh and Lai.
Wang said that he would ask for NT$100 million (US$2.93) in compensation in his lawsuit.
Joanna Lei is the daughter of retired vice admiral Lei Hsueh-ming (
The six officers had backed the purchase of frigates from South Korea until they made a trip to France. After their return from France, they had proposed buying the Lafayettes.
Hsu has claimed that Wang and other high-ranking military officials were paid an estimated US$20 million to endorse the French frigate deal.
During the news conference Joanna Lei asked Minister of National Defense Lee Jye (
Hsu said he welcomed the lawsuits. He also reiterated that Hau had played a key role in the policy reversal that led to the Lafayette purchase.
Hsu said that if pan-blue lawmakers are willing to relinquish their legislative speech immunity, he would be the first DPP lawmaker to follow suit.
Better yet, Hsu said, the pan-blue lawmakers might consider amending the Constitution to abolish such legislative privileges.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater