By Franz Schurmann

fschurmann@pacificnews.org

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Despite considerable media publicity in both countries concerned the Taiwan kick-backs with murder process and the partially related French kick-backs with influence peddling process will fade away as this millennium year ends. Some punishments may be inflicted on some of those involved but there will be no dramatic transparency of the corruption that lies at the base of both processes.

Short Introduction:

When Chilean general Augusto Pinochet was detained in Britain international publicity focused on the issue of impunity that protected high-ranking leaders and officials from prosecution for major crimes committed while they were in office. Pinochet returned to Chile and now faces prosecution in his home country.

Pinochet would not be the first of those in power during his dictatorship to be prosecuted in recent times. In neighboring Argentina a former general who became president during the bloody military dictatorship was jailed, as was in Mexico the brother of a previous president. Several leaders of the Rwandan and Yugoslav governments are being held and charged with genocide.

Yet though human rights advocates in the West have mounted worldwide campaigns to do away with impunity not much momentum has been generated at popular levels anywhere in the world. Impunity remains an elite issue and at that, only partially so.

In Taiwan and in France two legal processes are going on that involve high level leaders and officials. They are linked. The process in France focuses on a former foreign minister and his mistress. Huge kick-backs are involved but no corpse. In the Taiwan process in good part the kick-backs involved are the same but there is a corpse. Though not yet determined forensically as a murder, the death of a high-ranking naval officer, Captain Yin Ching-feng, is widely believed to be connected to the Franco-Taiwanese kick-backs. A special investigative group has been appointed by President Chen Shui-bian to break open a case that has been smoldering since December 9, 1993.

Both processes could either break open widely and implicate many more people or they could bit by bit whither away. Since we live in a globalized world what happens in other parts of the world does exert influence on what happens wherever here is. If this is the case then it does not seem likely that either the Taiwan or the French process will ever achieve notable results. Advocates and zealots aside, there is not much support at either grass roots or elite levels for making anti-impunity a worldwide movement.

In Taiwan today political embers are smoldering. Until last June the sense was the embers were going out. But because of a major political trial in Paris that got extensive coverage in the French media the newly elected Taiwan president, Chen Shui-bian, stoked the embers into new flames.

On December 9, 1993, the body of Captain Yin Ching-feng of the Taiwan Navy washed up on a beach in northern Taiwan. Because of the deteriorated condition of the corpse no cause of death could be forensically determined. At the time of his death he was the director of the Navy's Office of Weapons procurement. He supervised major weapons procurements from two countries, the United States and France. It was the French connection that allegedly led to his death and the currently flaming embers.

In June what in French law is called the "investigation," similar to a preliminary hearing in American law, began in a legal process brought against former Foreign Minister under the late president François Mitterrand Roland Dumas and his companion Christine Deviers-Joncour. Dumas is charged with having been bribed to change French foreign policy in the matter of sale of warships to Taiwan. Deviers-Joncour was the alleged conduit for the bribes that came from two huge corporations, the Elf-Aquitaine oil company and the Thomson weapons manufacturer.

Figures that came out of the investigation that were widely published in the French press shocked Taiwan. They showed that some 20 percent of the purchase price of naval equipment procured by Taiwan were used as kick-backs. In the case of the six Lafayette-type French warships bought by Taiwan the purchase price was originally set at 12 billion French francs (=around US$ 1.63 billion). But Taiwan was presented with a bill of FF16 billion (=around US$2.17 billion). The other FF4 billion (=around US$543 million) were kicked back to several recipients in Taiwan and France.

A lot of money allegedly went into Swiss, French and other bank accounts held by Dumas and Deviers-Joncour. Though Dumas denied it the version of what happened that appeared in the French media accused him of pressuring the French government to annul a ban on sales of warships to Taiwan. And they alleged he did so from money given him by Deviers-Joncour.

When the Dumas bribery scandal got wide media coverage President Chen Shui-bian decided to reopen an investigation into the Yin murder that had stalled. One naval officer, Kuo Li-heng, had some years before been sentenced to an indefinite term in prison for having accepted bribes in the warship deals. But there was no reason or grounds for linking the kickback with the murder cases. But when the French revelations came out everything changed in people's perceptions of the two cases.

According to an editorial in the pro-Taiwan World Journal of August 8 "everybody familiar with the issues knows that if there hadn't been military kickbacks Captain Yin Ching-feng would not have been murdered. His murder is only the tip of the iceberg." Now the president himself has said that those responsible for both the murder and the kickbacks must be brought to justice, even if that means high-ranking military officers.

Two individuals have been widely mentioned in the Taiwan media as possible suspects in the murder. One is Wang Chuan-pu, a businessman in the arms trade and representative in Taiwan of the French Thomson Corporation. The other is Captain Chen Lu-tseng who worked closely with Captain Yin and, after the latter's demise, rose rapidly in the ranks to become an aide to Admiral Liu Ho-chien, commander in chief of the Taiwan Navy.

There are police records putting Wang's car in the small town of Su'ao on Taiwan's northern coast shortly after the police identified the washed up body as that of Captain Yin. A common view among forensic experts is that Yin was probably killed at sea and the killers thought the body would sink to the bottom rather then wash up on shore.

Wang left Taiwan several years ago for the United States. He acquired a green card and applied for American citizenship. Captain Chen too is no longer in Taiwan. In fact as many as five naval officers may have recently also gone elsewhere. Just a few days ago Admiral Liu Ho-chen was interdicted from leaving Taiwan along with other high-ranking naval officers. The whereabouts of Wang and Chen are not known. The Taiwan government has asked the American and New Zealand authorities to search for them.

But, even if the two are located, there is a Catch 22 in getting them back to Taiwan. The missing men cannot be extradited unless charges are brought. But no charges can be brought unless the men testify in Taiwan before the new investigative group. And, of course, there can be no determination of the causes and circumstances of Captain Yin's death until some witnesses come to the fore.

A recent report in the Taiwan media says that the investigators had found bank accounts with large sums of money in them, some allegedly abroad, that belonged to Admiral Liu and five other naval officers. Taiwan's grand old military man General Hao Po-tsun described himself as clean as the driven snow. And, he added, years ago when he served as Minister of Defense so was former president Lee Teng-hui. He said he never was in favor of using arms merchants for weapons procurement.

On August 2 David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post that the French scandal "could explode with tremendous force, or as is often the case, be quietly defused and buried." But the Paris investigation has no corpse while the Taiwan one does.

If by the end of this millennium year little or nothing is heard about the murder of Captain Yin then Ignatius' second outcome will come true in Taiwan whatever it is in France. But if the embers start vigorously burning then it will not only rock Taiwan but also other places. In all countries the armed forces are considered honorable no matter how cruel they can be. Nothing can destroy military morale faster than the sight of high ranking officers having acquiesced in the murder of one of their own.