Mon, Aug 07, 2000 page4

• The murder of Yin Ching-feng: a history

  • By Brian Hsu / STAFF REPORTER
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  June, 1991 Taiwan takes delivery of four German-made minesweepers, purchased as "multi-purpose coastal boats" for the state-run Chinese Petroleum Corporation.

  Aug, 1991 Taiwan signs Lafayette frigate deal with France.

  April, 1993 The Central Trust of Taiwan signs, on behalf of the navy, a deal with an Italian company for a survey ship.

  May, 1993 Navy General Headquarters' weapons procurement office is inaugurated, with Captain Yin as its chief executive. Yin was scheduled for promotion to rear admiral at the beginning of the following year.

  Sept, 1933 Captain Yin visits France in connection with the Lafayette frigate deal, accompanied by procurement office colleague Captain Kuo Li-heng (郭力恆).

  Nov, 1993 Letter of accusation against Yin, Kuo and many other naval officers is sent to the Presidential Office. It accuses Yin of receiving NT$5 million in bribes from an arms broker mediating the navy's purchase of a survey ship from an Italian company.

  Dec 8, 1993 Yin takes action to fight the allegations. He visits, at night, three key people involved in the minesweeper, frigate and survey ship deals and secretly records conversations with them. The three are a military official and two former naval officials who became arms brokers after retirement. Yin is accompanied by Kuo on two of the visits.

  Dec 9, 1993 Yin goes missing at around 8:50am after going to meet somebody for breakfast near Navy General Headquarters in Taipei's suburban Tachih district.

  Dec 10, 1993 Yin's body is found off Suao (蘇澳), eastern Taiwan, by a local fisherman. Tu Cheng Chun-chu (涂鄭春菊), an agent for a German arms company providing parts for the navy's German-made minesweepers, leaves the country. It was she whom Yin had gone to meet when he went missing. Tu, an ethnic Taiwanese holding German citizenship, came to Taiwan to persuade the navy to execute the second part of the two-part contract it had signed with her company.

  Dec 11, 1993 The first of two cassette tapes recording conversations between Yin and the three key arms purchasers is recovered. It is later, suspiciously, demagnetized. Navy investigators, who obtained access to the tapes before anybody else, include Rear Admiral Liu Chin-an (劉錦安), currently director of the Ministry of National Defense's Judge Advocates Bureau, Rear Admiral Li Kun-tsai (李昆材), then director of Navy General Headquarters' weapons procurement office, and several others.

  Dec 15, 1993 The murder is reported by the press despite a gagging order imposed by the military.

  Dec 16, 1993 Yin's colleague, Kuo, is taken into custody for suspected links to the murder.

  Dec 18, 1993 An autopsy by Taiwan's top coroner, Yang Jih-sung (楊日松), finds evidence that Yin might have been murdered.

  Dec 20, 1993 Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), agent of the Lafayette manufacturer, Thomson CSF, in Taiwan, flees the country. He had allegedly offered a bribe of NT$9.5 million to Kuo Li-heng.

  Jan 1, 1994 Lawmaker Chu Kao-cheng (朱高正) alleges at a press conference that director of the Presidential Office's secretariat, Su Chih-chen (蘇志誠), and his younger brother Su Chih-jen (蘇志仁) are behind the murder of Yin.

  Jan 21, 1994 Shan Yi-chen (單亦誠), an arms broker who had tried to mediate Taiwan's purchase of minesweepers from Germany, flees the country amid suspicions of his involvement in the Yin murder. Shan was alleged to have bribed Kuo Li-heng with NT$2.5 million in an attempt to win a contract for parts provision for the German-made mine sweepers.

  Feb. 14, 1994 Tu, the German arms agent, meets in Singapore with members of a task force investigating the Yin murder. Tu denies any connection with or knowledge of the murder.

  March 18, 1994 Then lawmaker Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), accuses then Presidential Office Secretary-General Chiang Yen-shih (蔣彥士) of lobbying for certain parties involved in the navy's survey ship deal on March 8, 1993 The deal had also been one of Captain Yin's projects.

  April 19, 1994 Chen accuses navy Captain Chen Kuo-hsiang (陳國祥) of erasing one of the two cassette tapes. Captain Chen is a department chief of the political warfare sector at the Navy General Headquarters. He is, in that capacity, involved in the investigation into the case.

  Oct 1994 Kuo Li-heng is sentenced to life for leaking military secrets and taking NT$12 million in bribes from arms brokers.

  May, 1995 Ex-navy Deputy Commander-in-Chief Cheng Li-cheng (鄭立中) is sentenced to six years in prison for taking NT$1.52 million in bribes from an arms agent, who helped an Italian company to win the survey ship contract. Cheng's irregularities, though not directly related to the Yin murder, were discovered as the investigators, prompted by the circumstances of the murder, probed into other weapons purchase scandals. He becomes the highest-ranking military official to be convicted in connection with the Yin murder.

  Oct 1996 Commission-taking scandal surrounding the Lafayette frigate deal between Taiwan and France is exposed by the French media.

  Nov 1996 Yang I-li (楊以禮), son of Yin Ching-feng's younger sister (尹星雯), is found dead at his home in Canada. Yang's mother believes her son has been murdered because of weapons purchase scandals exposed in the wake of the Yin murder.

  March, 1997 Yin's widow, Li Mei-kuei (李美葵), announces at a press conference that she suspects that her husband's death might have resulted from the Lafayette frigate purchase scandal because he had visited France three months before his murder and returned with a list of defects he had found with the ship's design.

  March, 1998 Yin's younger brother, Yin Ching-luan (尹清楓), accuses Admiral Liu Ho-chien (劉和謙), who had been chief of the general staff at the time of the murder, of behind-the-scenes involvement in the Yin murder.

  July 3, 2000 Arms broker Shan Yi-chen (單亦誠) deported to Taiwan by authorities in Hong Kong, ending his self-imposed exile abroad which has lasted since the Yin murder. Shan denies, however, bribing Kuo Li-heng or possessing knowledge about who murdered Yin.

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