Frigates & Trains
Hollywood should be following the bribery scandal over French sales of stealth frigates to Taiwan’s navy. We appear to be nearing the end of this decades-long drama with a court decision last month that may cost French suppliers $861 million. Defense Industry Daily has a good summary of all the moves and countermoves, including the murder of a Taiwanese naval officer who tried to blow the whistle on the French. The BBC reports there have been at least eight unexplained deaths among people related to the case. The bottom line is that a Taiwanese court has found Elf Aquitaine guilty of paying bribes to French and Taiwanese officials, using Thomsen-CSF (now known as Thales) as a go-between to deliver the cash via Swiss banks. Taiwan had planned to purchase several small coastal defense frigates from the French, but somehow – after the cash was paid – the deal had morphed into buying six larger, and more expensive, Lafayette class frigates at a price-tag of $2.8 billion. Gotta be a script in there somewhere.
But the French never delivered all the high-tech weapons systems these ships depend upon – and don’t seem likely to anytime soon, according to an article in Asia Times. In a seeming tit-for-tat after the court ruling against the French companies, the French government has withdrawn its military technical support from Taiwan, making it extremely difficult for Taiwan to maintain and develop the fighting qualities of the frigates. As compelling as all this may be, what catches my attention is the connection between the frigate scandal and the Taipei subway system.
Taipei MRT
You see, the frigate trial has been pushed under instruction from Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, as a showpiece in his anti-corruption campaign. Ma was mayor of Taipei from 1998 to 2006, during the final construction and opening of Taipei’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system. The Taipei MRT was originally composed of six rail lines, for which the contracting was conducted in 1986-1988. Five of the lines were heavy rail lines (the classic subway), while one was a medium line that is largely elevated. As head of the commercial unit at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) during the competition, I was intimately involved with the efforts of U.S. companies to win the prime contracts for designing and building the MRT lines. We almost had a clean sweep; American firms won the prime contracts for five of the six lines – the five heavy rail lines. The sixth contract, for the medium line, was won by France’s Matra.
We never had absolute proof, but it was common “knowledge” among the American bidders and some Taiwanese officials that Matra had “paid” for the contract by making its aerospace and weapons technology available to Taiwan’s military on “favorable” terms. I don’t know if this was true or not, but it was the “scuttlebutt” at the time. What is undeniable is that the Matra-built line caused more headaches for Taipei’s city government, including Ma Ying-jeou’s administration, than all the American-built lines combined. Somebody was cutting costs in construction. What we don’t know is if the costs were re-couped by Matra to make up for payments related to the contract, or if it was simply lax oversight of the local companies that were building the above-ground stations and the massive pylons of the elevated system. We do know that Ma Ying-jeou was unimpressed.
In a touch of poetic justice, I was in the American embassy in Singapore (1993-1996) supporting the efforts of a U.S.-Canadian consortium to win the initial contracts for Singapore’s light-rail system. Our primary competitor was, you guessed it, Matra. The French government was applying considerable pressure on Singapore to select Matra, including, we were told, offering landing rights in France for Singapore Airlines. Appreciating how “squeaky clean” Singapore is on corruption, I went to the decision-makers for the light rail system, told them of the rumors and suggested they talk to the management of the Taipei MRT about their Matra-constructed line. The Singaporeans seemed quite interested and, just coincidentally, Matra was tossed out of the light rail competition for violating Singapore’s procurement rules.
