Ky Accuses Frenchmen Of Poll Sabotage

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31161, 10 September 1966, Page 15

Ky Accuses Frenchmen Of Poll Sabotage

IN Z.P.A. Reuter-Copyright)

SAIGON, September 9.

Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky yesterday accused two prominent French businessmen of heading an organisation which has spent 500,000 U.S. dollars to sabotage South Vietnam’s national elections.

The men, two of the most influential in Saigon’s French business community, were identified as Philippe Grandiean and Abel Goxe.

Grandjean is a director of a large brewery and soft drink distributing firm, and Goxe heads a large import - export firm with industrial interests in the country.

Air Vice-Marshal Ky’s security police arrested the two on Tuesday for “reasons of internal politics” but until yesterday there had been no official announcement of why the two men were being held. Efforts by the French Consul-General in Saigon to have them released have been fruitless so far.

Air Vice-Marshal Ky told newsmen at a party celebrating his 36th birthday that Grandjean and Goxe headed “an organisation which is trying to sabotage the election." He said the two “will be interrogated and judged. If their guilt is light, they will be expelled from Vietnam. “On the other hand . . . the heaviest sentence will be execution,” he said. He also said the organisation had spent about 50 mil-

lion piastres aimed at sabotaging the Sunday elections. But he did not elaborate on how they spent the money or what advantage they saw in disrupting the elections. French diplomatic officials have protested at the detention of the two men on grounds that the Vietnamese Government had failed to give any reason for the action. The French Consul-General. Mr Joseph Lambroschini met for an hour on Thursday with

Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan director of the Vietnames security police, to discuss the case.

There was speculation the arrests might be connected with Air Vice-Marshal Ky’s displeasure over a recent speech by the French President. General Charles de Gaulle, during his visit to Cambodia in which he called for United States withdrawal from Vietnam as a step towards peace.