Panel lacks funds to sue for kickbacks: investigator

A Taiwanese investigator of the kickback and murder scandal involving Taiwan's 1991 purchase of Lafayette-class frigates said that the investigators have not taken legal action to recover suspected kickbacks frozen in Swiss bank accounts, because they lack the funds to pay Swiss lawyers to do the job.

"We owe Swiss lawyers we hired for the Layette case more than NT$3 million [US$92,400]. We have asked the Cabinet to provide some funds to cover the lawyers' fees," said a member of the special prosecutorial panel in charge of probing the high-profile scandal yesterday, on condition of anonymity.

The investigator said that they have been discussing several legal approaches with the Swiss lawyers for recovering the suspected kickbacks, and they will file a suit when they obtain the necessary funds.

The Navy has already filed a commercial suit against a French company involved in the deal for damages in the amount of the suspected kickbacks.

According to a Central News Agency (CNA) report, Swiss judicial officials said they hope that Taiwan swiftly files a suit asking for the return of about NT$23 billion in suspected kickbacks in Swiss bank accounts frozen by the Swiss Federal Court.

The suspected kickbacks were deposited in about 46 bank accounts in the name of Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), the key suspect in the scandal and a fugitive arms dealer, his three sons and Wang's company.

Those accounts cannot be frozen forever, so it would be better for Taiwan to take legal action to have the money returned soon, the Swiss officials said, according to the CNA report.

The report said that Swiss legal experts have said that Taiwan has a good chance of getting back the huge deposits if it can provide evidence proving that the money was related to criminal activity -- even if cannot offer a detailed picture of exactly what happened.

A large number of Swiss court files believed to be related to the kickback scandal were handed over to the country by the Swiss government last November. The special prosecutorial panel investigating the case has since been scrutinizing those files.

Chinese-language newspapers last week reported that investigators had achieved a breakthrough. Kuo Li-heng (郭力恆), a former navy official, and his brother Kuo Wen-tien (郭問天), both of whom have been detained, have admitted that the US$20 million in their Swiss bank accounts was remitted to the accounts by Wang in order to be paid out as kickbacks to mid-ranking naval officers.

Wang fled the country following the death of navy Captain Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓), who was murdered in late 1993. Yin is widely believed to have been about to blow the whistle on colleagues who were taking kickbacks from the deal.