A top military adviser to the late French president Francois Mitterand pressured the head of French defense group Thomson-CSF to release 160 million french francs (about US$30 million at the time) in "commissions" related to the controversial sale of frigates to Taiwan, the daily Le Monde said yesterday.
High-level internal documents at Thomson seized by prosecutors in an "attempted extortion" charge brought by the defense group in 1997 show that the Elysee, or French presidential office, pressured Alain Gomez, head of Thomson, to release the sum to pay for "intermediary networks," the newspaper said.
Presidential adviser Philippe Vougny told Gomez that the president deplored the fact "certain engagements with Taiwan had not been seen through," referring to the money which Gomez, until then, had refused to release. Gomez apparently suspected that its recipients would be French citizens not related to the sale.
The funds were intended to be transferred to a Swiss concern named Frontier AG Bern, which served as a front for Alfred Sirven, former director of the French oil group Elf, and Christine Deviers-Joncours, mistress of then French foreign minister Roland Dumas, the report said. Sirven is currently on the run from the law and wanted under several warrants.
On the day of the meeting with Vougny, Gomez received the order that the transfer "must be discreet."
However, the Thomson documents do not reveal that Mitterand or his entourage had any knowledge the "engagements" would ultimately benefit Deviers-Joncours or Dumas.
In a letter dated Dec. 19, 1991, Gomez wrote to the former director general of Thomson, Jean-Francois Briand that "no persons related to the sale had ever doubted" that the "final destinations" of the funds were to be French.
Briand, charged with overseeing the intermediaries in the frigate sale, was already opposed to the fund transfer before being tipped off by Gomez of the possibility the money would end up in the wrong hands.
In a note dated Dec. 21, 1991, Briand expressed doubts about the real beneficiaries of the commission and mentioned the possibility of a camouflaged "political financing" and concluded: "I have the impression I've been manipulated."
The extortion charge is a second case related to the sale of the frigates to Taiwan.
Thomson-CSF is suspected of having paid a total of US$500 million in kickbacks to the sale in 1992.
The KMT is suspected of having received US$400 million and the Chinese Communist Party is thought to have received the remainder as compensation for the deal, to which it was fiercely opposed.
Taiwan has claimed that it knew nothing of the kickbacks in question, and has said if such kickbacks were proven, it would seek compensation for breach of contract.
Taiwan took delivery of the last of the six frigates on Jan. 16, 1998.
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