France could be sentenced to pay more than one billion euros to Taiwan in compensation relating to the controversial sale of military warships to the Asian nation in 1991, according to Le Parisien, a French daily newspaper.

Both parties presented their case last March before a Swiss-based three-person arbitration tribunal charged with settling commercial disputes. It is expected to give its verdict in three or four months, according to the report.

Charges of corruption linked to the 1991 sale of six La Fayette frigates for 16.4 billion French francs (2.5 billion euros) by the French company Thomson (now Thalès) were dismissed last October by a French penal court. The two magistrates investigating the case dropped their probe into whether illicit commissions were paid and to whom because much of the information in the case is classified.

The case's dismissal allowed the Taiwanese government to demand the reimbursement of any commissions — forbidden by the contract between the two countries — that may have been paid. The bribes are estimated at several hundred million euros — a former Socialist foreign minister cited a sum of 500 million euros in 1998.

A series of mysterious deaths have surrounded the case. Thierry Imbot, a former French secret service agent based in Taiwan, fell out of a window of his Taiwan high rise on October 10, 2000. Jacques Morisson, a former Thomson manager who negotiated the frigate contract, also fell out of his apartment bedroom window in Neuilly-sur-Seine on May 18, 2001.