The Control Yuan yesterday confirmed that it set up a special committee last week to investigate news reports that the air force's 1992 deal to purchase 60 Mirage fighter jets involved the payment of kickbacks.
A report in a French newspaper prompted New Party lawmaker Elmer Fung (
Control Yuan member Chao Chang-pin (趙昌平) yesterday told the Taipei Times that the special committee had been established last week and that it was similar to the committee investigating the Lafayette frigate scandal.
Chao said the group comprises five Control Yuan members -- himself, Liao Jiann-nan (廖健男), Ma Yi-kung (馬以工), Ku Den-mei (古登美) and Lin Shih-chi (林時機). Ma and Ku are also members of the committee investigating the Lafayette scandal.
Chao said that Vice Minister of Defense Chen Pi-chao (
According to Chao, Chen said that no kickbacks had been paid to seal the deal.
But he added that "the denial itself is insufficient to convince the public. Since the Ministry of National Defense has not investigated the deal, its attitude is not acceptable."
After the briefing, the Control Yuan members officially formed the special committee on the grounds that the defense ministry had not provided an adequate explanation.
According to several reports in Taiwan's Chinese-language media, the Mirage-2000-5 model which Taiwan purchased cost twice as much as the basic Mirage-2000 model.
The original purchase price per aircraft was to have been NT$42 million, but an increase in that price subsequently caused the Legislative Yuan to budget a further NT$10 billion to purchase the 60 fighters.
When Fung petitioned the Control Yuan to investigate the allegations he also demanded an explanation from former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who, a recent book claims, made the decision to go ahead with the deal in 1992.
"A Mirage-2000 is twice as expensive as an F-16," Feng had said. "Obviously it was a bad decision by Lee which cost the government more money [than necessary]. The products were not as good as we had expected. I think Lee should explain whether there was any personal interest or favoritism involved."
Fung quoted an Oct. 30 article in the French newspaper Le Monde. According to the story, French investigators froze the Swiss bank accounts of Andrew Wang (汪傳浦) -- the former Taiwan agent of French frigate-maker Thomson CSF, now called Thales, and fighter- maker Dasault Aviation -- after suspecting that he had earned NT$11.4 billion in kickbacks connected with the Mirage deal.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
NO CONFIDENCE MOTION? The premier said that being toppled by the legislature for defending the Constitution would be a democratic badge of honor for him Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday announced that the Cabinet would not countersign the amendments to the local revenue-sharing law passed by the Legislative Yuan last month. Cho said the decision not to countersign the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) was made in accordance with the Constitution. “The decision aims to safeguard our Constitution,” he said. The Constitution stipulates the president shall, in accordance with law, promulgate laws and issue mandates with the countersignature of the head of the Executive Yuan, or with the countersignatures of both the head of the Executive Yuan and ministers or
CABINET APPROVAL: People seeking assisted reproduction must be assessed to determine whether they would be adequate parents, the planned changes say Proposed amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) advanced yesterday by the Executive Yuan would grant married lesbian couples and single women access to legal assisted reproductive services. The proposed revisions are “based on the fundamental principle of respecting women’s reproductive autonomy,” Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), who presided over a Cabinet meeting earlier yesterday, as saying at the briefing. The draft amendment would be submitted to the legislature for review. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, which proposed the amendments, said that experts on children’s rights, gender equality, law and medicine attended cross-disciplinary meetings, adding that
RSS