Taiwan could soon file a complaint against France over alleged illegal commissions and kickbacks surrounding the 1992 sale of 60 Mirage 2000-5 fighter aircraft, reports said yesterday.
The news comes a little more than six months after defense company Thales wired US$875 million into a Taiwanese government bank account following a decade-long legal battle over kickbacks and illegal commissions for the US$2.5 billion sale by Thomson-CSF (which became Thales in 2000) of six Lafayette-class frigates to the Taiwanese navy in 1991.
Taiwanese authorities said the documents supporting claims that illegal commissions and kickbacks were paid to arms brokers in the Mirage sale were classified and in the possession of the Ministry of National Defense, adding that their content could not currently be made public.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The International Court of Arbitration will go through the documents to determine whether the sale — part of a project codenamed Tango, which also included spare parts, maintenance and upgrades for the aircraft — involved illegal commissions and kickbacks. If the court rules that such activity did take place, France could reportedly face fines of as much as 1 billion euros (US$1.3 billion).
According to French media, the initial contract for 48 Mirage 2000-5Ei interceptors and 12 Mirage 2000-5D twin-seat trainers in 1992 amounted to 22.8 billion francs (US$4.53 billion at the time), with Dassault Aviation and Thomson-CSF as the principal contractors and Matra providing the weapons systems.
However, Taiwan paid an additional 6 billion francs for the aircraft, a discrepancy that prompted the Control Yuan in 2002 to recommend that a probe be launched. The 6 billion francs could represent the amount paid in illegal commissions and kickbacks, reports said.
The Taiwanese air force announced in May 2010 that a review of the Mirage contract had been started. Reports at the time said Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), one of the arms dealers used as an intermediary in the Lafayette scandal, might also have played a role in the Mirage sale.
According to information that could not be independently verified, French officials discreetly approached the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) after 2002 to ask it to cancel any legal procedures against French defense contractors over the Lafayette and Mirage sales.
The Mirage aircraft, which remain in service, are all based in Hsinchu.
The Bureau Francais de Taipei yesterday refused to comment on the matter, telling the Taipei Times it was closely following developments on the issue.
The Paris-based Court of Arbritation last night would not confirm whether Taiwan had filed a complaint over the Mirage deal, saying that all arbitration cases were confidential.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the