Liechtenstein has handed over to Taiwan about US$11 million deposited in the country as part of illicit kickbacks involved in the Lafayette frigate scandal dating back three decades, the Ministry of Justice said on Thursday.
The first tranche of the illegal profits deposited in several countries has arrived in the account of the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office following international judicial cooperation, the ministry said in a press release.
The money would be returned to the national treasury, it said.
The scandal occurred in the late 1980s when the French government, through former partially state-owned enterprise Elf Aquitaine, was alleged to have paid bribes to secure a deal with Taiwan to deliver six Lafayette-class frigates.
The warships were sold via another French firm, Thomson-CSF, now Thales, to the navy in a US$2.8 billion deal signed in 1991, a figure said to include kickbacks and bribes that facilitated the purchase.
Liechtenstein in September 2006 responded positively to Taiwan’s request to freeze the illicit funds that went to deceased arms broker Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), the ministry said.
Since rulings by the Supreme Court in 2019 and 2021 that permitted the seizure of about US$487 million from the heirs of Wang, prosecutors have been in talks with Liechtenstein to have the money deposited there returned to Taiwan, the ministry said.
Most of the money was deposited in banks in Switzerland and the promised restitution of US$266 million made by the Swiss Department of Justice and Police in February 2021 is still being negotiated, the ministry said.
The Constitutional Court late last year ruled that the government could seize US$480 million from accounts belonging to the estate of Wang by retroactively applying property seizure rules that were amended in the Criminal Code in 2016.
The decision threw out a constitutional challenge by Wang’s wife, Yeh Hsiu-chen (葉秀貞), Wei Chuan Foods Corp and other parties to property confiscation rules stipulated by the Criminal Code.
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