Taipei eyes complaint over Mirage 2000 deal

If the International Court of Arbitration decides that Taiwan's case is valid, France could be forced to pay back as much as 1 billion Euros for illegal commissions and kickbacks in the 1992 deal

Taiwan could soon file a complaint against France over alleged illegal commissions and kickbacks surrounding the 1992 sale of 60 Mirage 2000-5 fighter aircraft, reports said yesterday.

Taiwanese authorities said the documents supporting claims that illegal commissions and kickbacks were paid to arms brokers in the Mirage sale were classified and in the possession of the Ministry of National Defense, adding that their content could not currently be made public.

The news comes a little more than six months after defense company Thales wired US$875 million into a Taiwanese government bank account following a decade-long legal battle over kickbacks and illegal commissions for the US$2.5 billion sale by Thomson-CSF (which became Thales in 2000) of six Lafayette-class frigates to the Taiwanese navy in 1991.

My article, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here.