The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday refused to comment on media reports alleging that the air force late last year filed a case with the International Court of Arbitration to seek the return of kickbacks that were allegedly paid during the procurement of French Mirage 2000 aircraft in 1992.
“The ministry has no comment on the news report and it will do whatever is necessary to protect the nation’s interests,” ministry spokesman Major-General David Lo (羅紹和) said.
The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that the Air Force had filed a suit late last year with the international court in Paris, after the court handed down a ruling on May 2011 ordering French defense company Thales (known as Thompson-CSF until 2000) to pay Taiwan’s government about US$861 million in kickbacks given in the scandal-plagued Lafayette frigate deal. The report said that the Air Force was seeking the return of kickbacks that were allegedly paid during the procurement of French Mirage 2000 jet fighters in 1992.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The report added that the legal action would mean that the Air Force had verified the allegations of kickbacks during the deal.
Taiwan ordered 48 single-seat Mirage 2000-5EI interceptors and 12 Mirage twin-seat 2000-5DI trainers in 1992. The first squadron became operational in 1997.
In August 2004, the Control Yuan announced that the Mirage deal was “suspicious” because the Air Force had originally reported the cost at 22.8 billion francs (worth US$4.3 billion in 1992), but 6 billion francs was added to the bill at a later date. The Control Yuan requested a judicial probe into the Mirage deal.
The newspaper’s report added that an initial investigation had found that Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), the main figure in the Lafayette scandal, allegedly received US$260 million in kickbacks over the course of the Mirage deal.
In October 2011, Minister of National Defense Kao Hua-chu (高華柱) approved in the legislature plans by the military to investigate kickbacks that were allegedly paid during the procurement of the fighters and added that the ministry planned to file a lawsuit with the international court the next year.
Last year, the ministry earmarked NT$70 million (US$2.3 million) for the legal action in its budget.
Wang fled Taiwan in late 1993 following the death of Navy Captain Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓), whose body was found in the ocean off the east coast of the country. Yin was believed to have been ready to blow the whistle on those who received kickbacks in the Lafayette frigate deal.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater