The verdict in the slander suit against former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) by retired Vice Admiral Lei Hsueh-ming (雷學明) will be handed down on Sept. 9, after the last hearing at the Taipei District Court yesterday.
“I did nothing wrong because I never named anyone when making the accusation,” Chen said at the hearing.
The case was filed in late 2005 after Chen, speaking on a TV talk show, accused “five retired Navy officers” of accepting kickbacks to produce false performance data on Lafayette frigates and inflate the price of the vessels to influence the Navy’s 1990 purchase of frigates from France, rather than from South Korea as planned.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
Democratic Progressive Party legislators Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) and William Lai (賴清德) repeated the accusations at a press conference.
Led by Lei, the retired officers — including two admirals, two captains and one commander — filed the suit against Chen, Hsu and Lai, asking for compensation of NT$2.01 billion (US$67 million).
The three defendants said they had only “speculated” that “five retired Navy officers” had taken bribes, but did not name names.
“We simply made reasonable speculation on the case, so it is not slander,” Chen said.
Hsu and Lai said they should have lawmakers’ immunity as they had made their accusation during a press conference at the legislature.
Lei told judges that the speculation was ridiculous.
“It was former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) who decided to buy the Lafayette frigates, not me. Also, I had been retired for more than two years when former Navy Captain Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓) was killed, so I had nothing to do with this,” Lei said. “Since the defendants could not provide sufficient evidence to prove their speculation, that is slander.”
Yin was head of the Navy’s Arms Acquisition Office. His body was found floating in the sea off the east coast of Taiwan on Dec. 9, 1993. Yin is believed to have been about to blow the whistle on colleagues taking kickbacks. His death prompted an investigation into irregularities surrounding the purchase of the frigates from France.
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