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).
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do