Metropolitan France's financial police have since last week conducted a series of raids in French Polynesia, where the team is currently investigating on a series of cases, including one involving former President Gaston Flosse.

The squad (from the National Division of Financial investigations - DNIF) on Friday (Thursday, Tahiti time, GMT-10) raided Flosse's home as part of an ongoing inquiry into the mysterious disappearance of local journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud (aka "JPK") in December 1997 when Flosse was President of French Polynesia.

Couraud's family have since continously alleged that JPK had been assassinated by members of a so-called "Intervention Group", the GIP, which Flosse set up a few years earlier.

Couraud was investigating possible links between Flosse and then French President Jacques Chirac and information that he could have unveiled on a secret bank account located in Japan.

The investigators "were obviously looking for information that could back-up the theory that the journalist's disappearance was linked to information he could have held to give credit to the existence of former President of the Republic (Chirac)'s 'Japanese account', fed by Gaston Flosse", Flosse's party, the Tahoeraa Huiraatira, stated late last week in a media release.

Tahoeraa Huiraatira offices were also searched.

"The inspectors have found nothing at the residence of Senator (Flosse) that could give credit to this theory . . . (Flosse) reaffirms that he has had nothing to do in the disappearance of the former journalist . . . French judiciary have favoured for several years the suicide or voluntary disappearance of JPK, and then a new inquiry has been launched, as a result of a politically-motivated manipulation", the release goes on.

Couraud's disappearance was first treated as a suicide, but since last year, a change of magistrate in charge of the inquiry has reactivated the murder theory.

The new approach was based on revelations made by a former GIP member, Vetea Guilloux, who explained Couraud had first been kidnapped, then tortured and eventually drowned in waters somewhere between the main island of Tahiti and neighbouring Moorea island.

Guilloux, however, has since withdrawn his earlier statements.

Couraud's body was never found.

Flosse has just been re-elected as one of French Polynesia's two members of the French Senate, despite the open disapproval from the French ruling party, the UMP, which this year decided to back current President Gaston Tong Sang and a former member of the French National Assembly, Beatrice Vernaudon. OF/Pacific Media Watch, 29/09/08.