Reports from French Polynesia say the President Gaston Tong Sang has been court in again as part of a probe into the 2002 sale of Anuanuraro atoll which was bought by the government for allegedly five times its value.
Mr Tong Sang was the lands minister at the time and the individual to
sign off the purchase on behalf of the then government of Gaston Flosse.
According to the Nouvelles de Tahiti newspaper, the investigators
arranged for Mr Tong Sang to be questioned along with the head of the land affairs administration.
Mr Tong Sang's lawyer, who flew in from Paris for the occasion, is
confident the probe will be inconclusive and be abandoned four years
after it was launched.
In March, the investigation shifted its focus from looking at an alleged swindle to possible abuse of public funds.
Among those implicated in the deal are all former top ministers of the
former Flosse government, including the then vice-president Edouard
Fritch, who backed the deal to buy the atoll from the territory's leading black pearl producer.
