| |
Taiwan frigate scandal refuses to
sink
By David Isenberg
Taiwan's French-frigate scandal refuses to die.
In the latest development, the island's former president
says he could have faced a military coup if he had not
agreed to the US$2.8 billion deal for six
Lafayette-class warships in 1991.
Lee Teng-hui,
Taiwan's head of state for 12 years until his retirement
in 2000, told Control Yuan investigators last year that
the military wanted the warships, according to an August
13 article by Agence France-Presse.
"Since they
already said 'yes,' how could I said 'no'? A military
coup d'etat was very much likely," Lee was quoted as
saying. "So I had to keep silent. Since he [then chief
of the General Staff Hau Pei-tsun] wanted [Lafayette
warships], I just let him do [it]. Nor could I have a
say in the price," he said.
The scandal has its
roots in the late 1980s, when Taiwan's military planners
conceived of a coastal defense scheme that relied on a
fleet of small frigates.
The project was well
under way by 1991 when a planned purchase of frigates
from South Korea was suddenly dropped in favor of buying
six larger and much more expensive warships built by
French shipyards. The boats were to be equipped with
electronic gear built by Thomson-CSF, the French company
that took the lead in negotiating the contract. Thomson
has since been privatized and renamed Thales.
Critics alleged that the decision to buy from
France was shaped by politics and bribes from the start.
The original coastal defense plan called for frigates of
no more than 2,000 tons, but the Thomson-CSF frigates
have a displacement of more than 3,000 tons. Moreover,
the frigates' $2.8 billion price tag made them the
largest procurement contract in Taiwan's history.
Under a February 1, 1993, contract, the
Lafayette-class frigates sold by France were to have
been assembled by China Ship Building Corp (CSBC) in
Taiwan. Moreover, because of tremendous pressure from
mainland China, the original contract only provided for
the sale of the frigates and their engines, without any
arms, surveillance equipment or combat-management
systems.
Sales of the frigates required
overturning France's policy of not supplying arms to
Taiwan. Such a large contract, however, had great appeal
because of France's rising unemployment and its
perennial arms-sales competition with the United States.
In March 1993, however, Taiwan's Navy General
Headquarters unexpectedly ordered CSBC to stop the
assembly work, creating a major financial loss for the
company. The Taiwanese and French governments had
decided to have the French assemble all six frigates
instead. That same month, Yin Ching-feng, head of the
navy's Arms Acquisition Office, visited the French
authorities, pointing out flaws with the frigates and
demanding remedial action.
On December 8, 1993,
representatives from Thomson CSF visited Navy General
Headquarters to provide a briefing on the frigates'
electronic combat system. The next day, Yin disappeared,
and his body was later found floating in the sea.
It has been alleged that Yin was murdered
because he was ready to blow the whistle on rampant
corruption in the military. Military coroners quickly
announced the death was a suicide. But an independent
autopsy demanded by his widow called his death a murder,
pointing out that his head had been bashed in and that
he had suffered painful wounds while still alive.
The Control Yuan concluded that military
investigators had not only failed to collect
fingerprints, but also had actually blocked
investigators and withheld evidence that would prove his
death a murder. Shortly afterward, on December 20,
Andrew Wang, the Taiwan agent for Thomson CSF, left
Taiwan. Yin's murder remains unsolved.
On May
24, 1996, the first assembled Lafayette-class frigate
was delivered to Taiwan. Its anti-air-strike
capabilities remain deficient, however. Integration of
the frigate's electronic-combat system remains
incomplete. The Taiwan government paid enormous sums of
money for poor-quality frigates.
Control Yuan
investigators had previously investigated why the
military made a U-turn by deciding to purchase the
Lafayette frigates, after previously targeting
Korean-built frigates. In a report released in March it
found that the price of the deal had been inflated to
FF15 billion ($2 billion) from the original quote of
FF10 billion. It also found that Taiwanese politicians
and military leaders pocketed $26.75 million in
kickbacks from the sale.
The Control Yuan report
also reportedly found that France betrayed Taiwan's
confidence by passing top-secret information to China
about the sale of the frigates to Taiwan in the early
1990s.
Reportedly, official documents obtained
from the French government showed that the prime
minister at the time, Edith Cresson, instructed her
foreign minister, Roland Dumas, to report to Beijing on
all details of the transaction process. Cresson's
Socialist government served president François
Mitterrand.
The French side of the frigate story
has been just as controversial. In 1997, Paris
magistrates investigating corruption found evidence of
payoffs linked to the frigate sale. The key witness was
a French woman named Christine Deviers-Joncour, who said
she had been paid several million dollars to influence
her lover, the former foreign minister, Dumas, to drop
his objections that the frigate sale would poison French
relations with Beijing.
Dumas did indeed drop
his objections, but has denied receiving any payoffs. He
was convicted last year for taking money improperly from
Deviers-Joncour, and both are now appealing the verdict.
At the time of the frigate sale, Deviers-Joncour
was employed as a highly paid lobbyist by
Elf-Acquitaine, a French state-owned oil company that
has traditionally been an arm of French foreign policy,
occasionally including arms sales. Elf, too, has since
been privatized and is now part of TotalFinaElf.
The Control Yuan report also faulted the
investigation into the death of Yin. It recommended the
courts-martial of senior Taiwanese officials including a
former prime minister, former vice chief of the general
staff and the navy's former commander in chief. To date
28 people, including 13 military officers and 15 arms
brokers, have been jailed in Taiwan on charges of
bribery and leaking military secrets, although no one
has been charged over Yin's death.
In July last
year six former Taiwanese naval officers were indicted
on charges of malpractice and forging documents in
connection with the scandal. All six have pleaded not
guilty.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
