TW Government agency asked me to falsify an end user declaration

Legal General Legal Matters
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Prior to being employed by a Taiwanese government agency, they asked me to help them find & buy sensitive dual use equipment from a Western supplier.

The Western supplier’s sales rep asked for more details about who the end user will be.

As a matter of professional courtesy, I asked the Director General of the TW government agency what I should say, fully expecting him to name his agency. To my surprise, he told me to point to a Taiwanese university as the end user.

When I checked with the Director of R&D of the university whether they were happy that I name them as the end user, he said I should declare myself to be the end user.

So effectively we have a nice chain of whodunnit going on here: Taiwanese government agency points to the university, university points to me.

The fact of the matter was that the Taiwanese government agency was buying the equipment, so they should be the end user. To declare anything else is either misinformed/incompetent, or fraudulent. A visiting researcher (me) shouldn’t even be expected to sign an end user declaration, let alone declare themselves to be the end user. If a university is buying it, their purchasing department should be responsible. At this stage I wasn’t employed by either the government agency or the university.

I of course refused to co-operate. The Taiwanese government agency that offered me a job here didn’t honor their word, so I came to Taiwan for nothing.

What should I do about it?

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Let them figure it out. Get your boss and the uni guys on a conference call and let them figure it out.

I wouldn’t worry too much and try to resolve it with minimal confrontation.

That’s not how it works here.

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It seems to have passed the point of that possibility.

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Winnie the Pooh is the end user.

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I think the offer stands he just doesn’t like the SOP? Don’t know, the wording is ambiguous.

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Well, you did the morally correct thing. But you’re probably not going to get anything from this employer now.

Not sure if that would be the whole government or every university at this point.

What I would do is alert the company who makes the product you were being asked to cover for.

Possible dual use technology? Possible risk of transfer to China? Hard to say without more details

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Probably they don’t want US disclosure forms etc. up the wazoo.

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Taiwanese universities deal with a dozen of those on a daily basis, that cannot be the issue.

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One of my UK clients wanted to send some dual use equipment to me in Taiwan. They required I sign a form for it saying it would not be used for military purposes. Should I have told them that as it is their equipment I would not sign lol?

So yes I signed the form. Funny thing was I pointed out to them the equipment they were sending was made in Taiwan hahahaha When they looked where it was manufactured they were like wtf is the UK government requesting they sign the form for.

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About something as sensitive as sensitive dual use technology?

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So have you signed any contract?

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Of course. Especially in electronics and material science departments. Unless it’s a no name uni but I assume that’s not the case if they are working with the government on a sensitive topic.

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Problem is many things made in Taiwan or China or other countries can be dual use. So then when sales reps ask where it’s going to be sold to their home government requires the end user to sign a declaration it won’t used use for military purposes. I have special band pass filters for reducing noise interference for satellite signals. The same filters are used for things like submarines to quiet them so signals are not emitted. Communications are like this.

Some of the ones I buy are from a Canadian company Norsat.

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Isn’t it that quite a lot of stuff can fall under dual use and have both military and civilian applications?

It might depend on the field/equipment, but I don’t find it totally bizarre in principle for the end user declaration to be signed by the actual end user (i.e., the researcher or PI in the case of a university). I think I signed a couple when I used to do academic research (for chemicals classified as drug precursors, and outside Taiwan). I just saw it as a formality, confirming I wouldn’t do anything besides what I was supposed to do such as passing it to someone else.

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I did it for some nanoparticles but I was going to be responsible for them. SOP for equipment may be different I’m not sure. But yeah it’s not really as scary as it sounds.

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It’s too late, the relationships have broken down.

Legging it to buy a laptop or a toner cartridge for a printer is one thing. Putting my name on a form, that I know to be false, is another thing.

Thank you. But doing the right thing can hurt, as I am finding out now.

In this sense, Taiwan is a small country.

The TW government agency strongly encouraged its employees, right up to the #1 man, not to visit China. I don’t know how “strong” it was, since I wasn’t with them long enough to know if anyone tested the boundaries. So I don’t think the tech would end up in China.

Note if you sign that form, and change employer or leave the country, etc., you may be required to notify the supplier to a change in the end user. This is why if an organization’s purchasing department should handle things like this - researchers move around but the purchasing department will remain as long as the company remains.

Individual components in the tech to be bought may have come from Taiwan. But the assembly and overall capability was certainly Western in origin. Given funding, it was well within my capabilities to rebuild my own version of the Western equipment myself here in Taiwan. Buying stuff off the shelf, and being saddled with these sorts of reporting obligations and export licenses, is over-rated.

No, but I have emails and text messages, and phone recordings, etc. saying they wanted to hire me, so please come to Taiwan.

If it is a consumable, then one can sign an end user declaration and at the end of their research, dispose of any remainder. Therefore the end user declaration remains true and accurate, and one cannot be pursued later by some three-letter agency for falsifying an end user declaration.

To sign a document one knows to be inaccurate, or false, is something else.

Would I gain any traction complaining to the MoJ anti-corruption branch, or the Control Yuan?

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The department bought and own the equipment, but the end user is researchers, no?

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It seems to me the whole problem hinges upon which of the “dual uses” is actually involved here.

If the OP is using this technology - whatever it is - for innocuous purposes, I don’t see that it matters who signs the declaration. I regularly order stuff from the US which might be theoretically “dual use” and sign it off without any worries, because I know what I’m using it for, and it isn’t missiles and stuff.

If the government agency are intending to reverse-engineer whatever-it-is, or apply it to military kit, then all you can really do is walk away.

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Why didn’t you just sign it with the proviso that you will be the end user for this current project only.

So it was intentionally being bought for a different use then the one being stated and you already knew this?

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Take it as a lesson learned, go home and be wiser in the future.

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