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| Europe |
| Ship Scam Could Cost France $$$$$$$ |
| 2004-01-28 |
| More fun & games & dead witnesses. EFL: France could be made to pay USD 600 million (EUR 476 million) in fines to the government of Taiwan because of illegal commissions that massively inflated the price of warships sold to Taipei in 1991, according to an official report leaked on Wednesday. Taipei paid more than 16 billion francs (EUR 2.44 billion) for the six La Fayette class frigates, and judicial investigations have since revealed that around a third of that was spent on a complex lobbying operation to secure the deal by the then state-owned French defence-electronics giant Thomson. Thomson - now the privatised Thales - and the Taiwanese government have resorted to an international commercial tribunal to settle the dispute. The controversial frigates sale was "easily the biggest politico-financial scandal of the last ten years" in France, according to a recent investigation into the case by former judge and European parliamentarian Thierry Jean-Pierre. Two French judges looking into the affair have been consistently refused access to documents that could be used to trace the commissions, as successive French governments have invoked a "defence secrecy" law - prompting speculation about a top-level cover-up. "Cover up? Us? Non!" Last October the Taiwanese govermnment became a civil plaintiff in the judges’ investigation, giving it access to the legal dossier that contains the proof that commissions were paid. Oops! Armed with this evidence the Taiwanese case before the commercial tribunal is unanswerable, Bot warned. According to Jean-Pierre’s book, Thomson paid out millions of euros to persuade Taiwanese officials to drop plans to buy warships from Korea, and then to defuse obstruction to the deal from Beijing and parts of the French political establishment. And now the French are jumping in bed with Beijing to sell them arms. Now, what’s the word for that, oh, yeah. Whore. The Taiwan frigates formed the background to the trial of former foreign minister Roland Dumas, who was cleared a year ago of being bribed by his lover to drop his opposition to the sale. It also featured in last year’s mass trial of officials at the oil group Elf, which ran part of the lobbying operation on behalf of Thomson. Jean-Pierre said that at least eight people linked to the affair had died in suspicious circumstances, including a Taiwanese naval official who was about to report his suspicions of bribe-taking and a French intelligence agent tasked with following the negotiations for the deal. Remind me again why we’d want the French as allies? |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #2 $400 million for a French Frigate? In 1991? Hell maybe Taiwan thought they were buying the shoals. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-1-28 3:49:57 PM |
| #1 Remind me again why we’d want the French as allies? Because you keep your enemies closer. And it's easier to do by calling them "friend". Sick, but, whatcha gonna do? |
| Posted by: Hyper 2004-1-28 2:35:41 PM |