The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said it has no comment on international media reports that Airbus SE has been fined 104 million euros (US$128 million) for a dispute linked to missile sales to Taiwan in 1992 by Matra Defence S.A.S., which Airbus acquired in 1998.
Airbus said in a statement that it had been ordered by an arbitration court to pay the fine “for a complaint of breach of contract concerning the sale of missiles,” Agence France-Presse reported.
Matra Defence was accused of jacking up the prices and remitting commissions to an intermediary who was not authorized by Taiwan at that time, according to Radio France Internationale.
Matra said in the statement that it was “studying the fine and evaluating next steps.”
An Airbus spokesman in France declined to provide details on the case, and ministry spokesman Chen Chung-ji (陳中吉) in Taipei was equally tight-lipped, saying that the ministry would not give further information about the case.
However, a defense official told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) that the air-to-air missiles in question were the MBDA MICA medium-range and R.550 Magic short-range missiles that the military bought for the French-made Dassault Mirage 2000 fighter jets for which it had signed a separate deal in November 1992.
The government’s claims that Matra took kickbacks over the missile sale were indirectly substantiated by the arbitration’s results, the defense official said on condition of anonymity.
France was a major source of arms to Taiwan in the 1990s, including six La Fayette-class frigates, 60 Mirage 2000 jets and weapons used by those platforms, but many of those deals later became scandals amid allegations that French officials, corporate executives and others had demanded commissions in connection with the sales.
Dassault Aviation and two other French aerospace companies on Oct. 25 last year announced that they had been fined by Taiwan’s government combined 227 million euros to settle disputes linked those arms sales.
Dassault said it had been fined 134 million euros, while radar supplier Thales (previously known as Thomson-CSF) said its fine was 64 million euros and enginemaker Safran said its was 29 million euros.
A French court in 2011 fined the French government and Thales a record 630 million euros over the use of commissions to sell the La Fayettes in 1991.
The Taiwanese government made sporadic efforts over the years to recover money lost in illegal commissions, amid concern that pressing the cases against the manufacturers might disrupt the military’s efforts to secure parts for the aging Mirage 2000s and their weapons systems, the government official said.
However, those fears were allayed after the French government last year approved the sale of spare parts and components for the fighters and the two types of missiles, the official said.
Additional reporting by Lo Tien-pin
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