Arbitrators ordered French defence group Thales on Monday to compensate Taiwan hundreds of millions of dollars (euros) in a dispute over a warship sale in 1991, the company said.
"Thales has been ordered to pay damages and interest," a spokesman for the company told AFP. Thales later said in a statement that "the total sum is around 630 million euros (including interest)" and that it would appeal.
The arbitrators ordered the payments to Taiwan to make up for unauthorised commissions that were paid to help Thomson-CSF, the company that later became Thales, win a deal to sell six frigates to Taiwan in 1991.
The contract governing the deal forbade such payments and stipulated that any illicit commissions would have to be repaid to Taiwan. The contract also said that any dispute would be settled by the panel of arbitrators.
Thales must pay 591 million dollars plus interest since August 2001, the Taiwanese navy's lawyer Xavier Nyssen told AFP.
"The preliminary overall estimate is between 800 million and one billion dollars," Nyssen said.
The Thales company spearheaded the sale, but the main stake in the contract was held by the French state-owned shipbuilder DCN. Several sources said the French state would have to pay 70 percent of the penalty.
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