AFP,
France could be made to pay $600 million (476 million euros) 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 Jan. 28.
The report, drawn up by Paris prosecutor Yves Bot and handed over to the justice ministry on Jan. 15, warned that France is financially liable because of a clause in the contract stipulating that if commissions were found to have been paid, the amount should be deducted from the sale price, officials said.
Taipei paid more than 16 billion francs (2.44 billion euros) 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 defense-electronics giant Thomson.
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Thomson — now the privatized Thales — and the Taiwanese government have resorted to an international commercial tribunal to settle the dispute.
The controversial frigate sale was
