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Editorial: Wipe out military corruption

After six years on the shelf, the investigation into the murder of navy Captain Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓) seems at last to be getting somewhere. This is in part due to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who has stressed several times that Yin's case must be "pursued to the very end even if it shakes the foundations of the nation."

A special task force conducting the investigation has now listed 27 people, including two former chiefs of the general staff (CGS), two vice CGSs and several former navy commanders-in-chief for questioning. Investigators are even targeting former Presidential Office staff members. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the level of officials involved show that "shaking the foundation of the nation" might not have be any exaggeration.

In the martial law era, people used to be constantly worried about the possibility of a military coup. But after Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) and Tang Fei (唐飛), Taiwan society has gotten used to military men holding high-level government offices. The nightmare of a military coup is now a thing of the past. But the Yin case has shown that military men can be even more ferocious in their hunt for money than for power.

Former French foreign minister Roland Dumas has admitted that as much as US$760 million in kickbacks was paid to officials and officers in France, China and Taiwan for the sale of Lafayette frigates to the Taiwan navy. Of that amount, investigators believe more than NT$10 billion went to recipients in Taiwan. These revelations have shed light on the hidden black holes in Taiwan's military budget, which takes up a good slice of the overall government budget every year. No one can tell how much taxpayer money has been skimmed. Investigators should not only pursue Yin's case and bring his assassins to justice, they must also bring to light the weapons procurement scandal that surrounds the murder and break up the webs of corruption within the military. Not least because corruption has a direct impact on government finances.

Previous investigations into the Yin case were conducted "from the bottom up." As a result, the investigations ran into obstacles before they reached high-level officers. Also, because the investigations were conducted jointly by military and civilian investigators, they ground to a halt when civilian prosecutors were barred from questioning top military officers and the military investigators wouldn't play ball. The fact that the investigations are now going from the top down is the main reason why we are seeing speedy progress.

Some worry that the implications of the investigation may become so unsettling that it must be stopped. However, now that the list of suspects is gradually coming to light, the judiciary has the responsibility to pursue the case, punish the guilty and clear the names of the innocent. Even if top military brass and civilian officials are implicated, bringing them to justice is not likely to have any significant impact on the government because most of the officials are no longer in office now. If the investigation is halted for fear of damaging military morale or "shaking the foundations of the nation," then not only will the government lose the trust of the people, the credibility of the judiciary will also go down the drain.

Also, even if Taiwan's government wants to leave some stones unturned in the Yin case, both Dumas and his ex-mistress Christine Deviers-Joncour have vowed to reveal the names of the people who received kickbacks from the Lafayette deal when the Elf corruption trial opens in France in January next year. If some Taiwan officials are unexpectedly exposed at that time, the government will see its credibility slide catastrophically unless it has pursued the investigation with vigor.

The Yin case has expanded to an astonishing size; there is no turning back either for the investigators or the Taiwan government.
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