Less than two years after winning a landmark 630 million euro (US$875 million) lawsuit against a French defense contractor over the scandal-plagued sale of Lafayette-class frigates to Taiwan in the 1990s, an arbitration court last week shot down Taipei’s hopes for a second win in a related case, citing a lack of evidence.
In its follow-up claim, Taipei had filed claims of 45.5 million euros, including interests and prosecution fees, against DCNS, the maker of the frigates, over a 1996 spares supply contract for the six multi-role stealth frigates.
A Basic Ordering Agreement signed on May 20, 1996, stipulated that Taiwan would be entitled to a 15 percent reduction if French agents were caught paying commissions to middlemen.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
However, an arbitration tribunal under the International Chamber of Commerce cut the compensation to 3 million euros, citing a lack of evidence to support Taiwan’s full claims against DCNS, then a state-owned entity known as Direction de Constructions Navales, Defense News reported.
The Ministry of National Defense had set aside NT$75 million (US$2.6 million) in this year’s defense budget to fund the new litigation, which it filed on Oct. 12 last year.
The ruling follows a similar one handed down on June 9 last year, in which Thales, a company then known as Thomson-CSF, which supplied the electronics on the frigates, and the French government were ordered to pay Taiwan 170 million euros and 460 million euros respectively for illegal kickbacks and commissions in the initial US$2.8 billion Bravo deal signed in 1991.
Aside from hampering access to critical technologies to Taiwan, the Lafayette scandal also claimed the life of Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓), a naval captain who is believed to have been murdered in December 1993 as he was about to blow the whistle on colleagues who were receiving kickbacks in the deal.
Thomson-CSF’s agent in Taiwan, Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), fled the country soon after Yin’s body was found floating near Suao (蘇澳).
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS