Another party involved in the scandal surrounding the purchases of the six French-made Lafayette-class frigates mysteriously died last month, the French newspaper Le Monde reported.
According to the paper, Jacques Morisson, a former French Thomson-CSF representative in Taipei, fell out of the window of his apartment June 4.
Although the police claimed that it was simply an accident, Morisson's death looks extremely suspicious, as he was the fifth French person involved in the Lafayette case who has died in an odd fashion.
Last October, Thierry Imbot, the son of a former French intelligence chief who was in Taipei from 1989-94 as a "special officer" of the French Institute in Taipei, died after he fell from a building in South Africa.
His death was said to be an accident.
Last March, Thomson Japan's general manager Jean-Claude Albessard also passed away under mysterious circumstances, as he died from a "sudden cancer."
According to Christine Deviers-Joncour, ex-mistress to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, two other parties responsible for money laundering in the Lafayette case were killed in a mysterious car accident in South Africa.
The Lafayette case was linked to the French electronics firm Thomson-CSF after investigators had discovered that Thomson Taiwan's office manager Andrew Wang Chuan-pu (汪傳浦), Imbot, and Albessard had all left Taiwan immediately following navy captain Yin Ching-feng's (尹清楓) as yet unexplained murder on Dec. 8, 1993.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
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