Former navy captain Kuo Li-heng (郭力恆), who has already served 20 years in jail for a conviction over corruption, will have to go back to jail, but only briefly, for taking kickbacks in the purchase of six Lafayette-class frigates 20 years ago, Greater Taichung prosecutors said on Friday.
The Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said notice has been given to Kuo to report to prosecutors on Friday to serve up to six months in prison. He was asked to serve in the time in Greater Taichung because that is the region listed on his household registration.
The new jail term is the result of a final ruling by the Supreme Court in April, which handed Kuo a 15-year sentence and a fine of NT$200 million (US$6.63 million) for his involvement in the Lafayette case.
Kuo, a key figure in the procurement of six Lafayette-class frigates from France in 1991, and the other defendant in the case, fugitive arms broker Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), were also ordered to return NT$10.4 billion in illicit gains frozen in foreign bank accounts.
However, Kuo will not have to do any additional prison time, because the Supreme Court decided to combine the sentence with Kuo’s previous conviction, making a single jail term of 20 years, which Kuo served before being released in December last year.
According to a clause in the Criminal Code, defendants with combined sentences cannot serve more than 20 years in prison.
However, Kuo, 61, will still have to spend up to six months in prison because he claimed he did not have enough money to pay the NT$200 million fine.
Kuo is best known for his connection to the death of his former boss, navy captain Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓), whose 1993 murder remains unsolved.
Kuo was an officer in the navy’s weapons procurement office at the time, and is considered one of the few people who knows the circumstances surrounding Yin’s death.
Yin is widely believed to have been murdered because he was preparing to publicly name people who took kickbacks on the inflated prices the nation paid for the six frigates from France.
About a dozen Taiwanese and French nationals have died under suspicious circumstances since Yin’s body was found by fishermen on Dec. 10, 1993, in waters off Suao Township (蘇澳) in Yilan County.
In addition to his possible knowledge of the Yin case, Kuo’s case has received major attention for the massive amounts of money he stashed away outside of Taiwan.
The ruling by the Supreme Court means that Taiwan can finally lodge an application with Swiss authorities to retrieve NT$10.4 billion that has been frozen in the accounts of Wang, who was the middleman in the Lafayette-frigate purchase.
The Supreme Court’s decision upheld a High Court ruling that established Kuo’s relationship with Wang and their roles as the principal offenders.
After Thomson-CSF, a French contractor later renamed Thales S.A., won the bid to sell the frigates, Kuo was a key source of military information for Wang, the High Court found.
Wang, the Taiwan agent for Thomson-CSF at the time, fled the nation a few days after Yin’s death in 1993, and has remained abroad since then.
Many of the kickbacks paid in the case are thought to still be in overseas accounts in Wang’s name.
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