Military

Tanque Argentino Mediano S.E. (TAMSE)

The TAM (Tanque Argentino Mediano, Argentine Medium Tank) is a the 40 tons class tank based on the German Marder 1 IFV. The first few TAM's were equiped with the locally produced variant of the L7A1. Later vehicles were armed with the Rheinmetall LTA2, and the last produced vehicles were equiped with a locally produced modified version of the French CN-105-57, produced in the TAMSE (Tanque Argentino Mediano Sociedad del Estado) military factory of Rio Tercero, in Cordoba province. TAMSE has apparently been renamed Arsenal E. de Luca.

In October of 1983, while the government of general Bignone finished, the state company TAMSE (Medium Argentine Tank, Society of the State) signed a contract with the company Agrometal International tie Corp. to Diego Palleros (processed by judge Urso by the triangulation from arms to the Croatia and Ecuador) and with Matmetal, both been in Panama, to sell 60 tanks by a value of 90 million dollars to Iran. When he was already in functions Raul Alfonsin, it appeared a supply of another company with a smaller price and also guaranteed by TAMSE and the Iranians they broke the contract with Palleros. Then, this one demanded to Argentina before the Justice of Panama, protesting the payment of the commission by the intermediation (in that time $9 million) and one indemnification by all the expenses that it had had. It argued that the operation had been interrupted by initiative of the Argentine State.

In 1988 Educador awarded an initial contract to TAMSE for providing tanks to Ecuador for more than 100m dollars, in competition with French, US and Austrian tanks, in which TAMSE got the highest number of points.

Already in the administration of Carlos Menem, in 1990 July, the then minister of Defense, Humberto Romero , by means of the Resolution N° 10 approved a extrajudicial agreement with Palleros . This it stopped of the judgment and the Argentine State was committed to pay to him to $15 million in quotas. But that operation was objected by the Ministry of Economy.

The Argentine dealer of arms Diego Palleros offered on 18 November 1992, to the ambassador of Iran in Argentina, 200 Oerlikon automatic guns of Swiss origin, those that were property of the Factory of Medium Argentine Tanks (Tamse), that depended on the portfolio of Defense. The tubes offered to Iran by 1.5 million dollars had been acquired two years before by the Ministry of Defense to place them in tanks, but they were not used by lack of resources.