Airbus: “endemic” corruption prompts record fine
Great news for the nation’s coffers, said Robert Lea in The Times. “The British taxpayer will be nearly s1bn better off” now Airbus has struck a High Court deal with the Serious Fraud Office to settle claims of “bribery and corruption across five continents”, following a threeand-a-half-year international inquiry. Overall, Europe’s largest aerospace firm will pay a record s3.6bn in penalties – about a year’s profit – after admitting it used a “network of middlemen” dangling large backhanders to land contracts in 20 countries. France will get s2.1bn and the US is due s530m. Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court, described the corruption in parts of Airbus as “endemic”.
The SFO investigation focused on the planemaker’s activity in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Taiwan and Ghana between 2011 and 2015, said The Guardian. Airbus “secret agents” were run out of a unit at the company’s French HQ – reportedly dubbed “bullshit castle” by former CEO Tom Enders. But “turbulence” from this affair has caused huge ructions in Britain, where Airbus employs 13,500 people. “Scores of senior executives” have been sacked.
Airbus hopes the fine will “draw a line” under the debacle, enabling it to make the most of rival Boeing’s current travails. But the ripples are still spreading, said Reuters. This week, AirAsia’s colourful boss Tony Fernandes (who also controls football club QPR), was forced to “step aside” after the Malaysian-based airline was dragged into the imbroglio. Investigators claim 180 AirAsia planes were “secured by way of improper payments”, said Stefania Palmer in the FT. The connection may have been motor-racing. Fernandes, “a sportsloving entrepreneur”, once owned the now-defunct Caterham F1 team, “which counted Airbus among its sponsors”.