An international court has ordered the French government and defence electronics group Thales to pay US$830 million in compensation to Taiwan over the sale of six Lafayette frigates in 1991.
The scandal, linked to the multiple deaths in Taiwan and France, reads like a detective thriller spiced up with a complex maze of bribery, kickbacks and horse-trading and implicating high-ranking officials from Taiwan, France and the mainland.
The ruling, issued by the International Chamber of Commerce's International Court of Arbitration on Monday, could help draw a line under one of the most scandalous arms deals in modern history.
Under the ruling, Thales, formerly known as Thomson-CSF, will have to pay 27 per cent of the compensation and the French government the rest. This includes interest and arbitration and lawyers' fees.
The court said that when Taiwan signed the warship deal with Thomson-CSF, which worked with French state-owned shipbuilder DCN to win the US$2.8 billion contract from Taipei, an article in the deal forbade the use of brokers or the paying of commissions. The court later found proof of the involvement of a Taiwanese middleman, identified as Andrew Wang Chuan-pu, who served as an agent for Thomson-CSF to facilitate the deal.
'We welcome such a ruling as the case affects our national interests and the military's reputation,' Taiwan's vice-defence minister, Chao Shih-chang, said at a news conference in Taipei yesterday.