Airbus pays 15.9 million euros to close French corruption investigation

A French judge on Wednesday allowed European aerospace company Airbus to pay 15.9 million euros ($16.4 million) to avoid a corruption investigation into aircraft deals in Libya and Kazakhstan from 2006 to 2011.

Prosecutors from France’s national financial crime unit (PNF), obtained agree with Airbus earlier this month, said the fine was “fair and appropriate”.

It had previously highlighted the “repeated nature of corrupt activities” by the aircraft giant, but said the company had cooperated with the “dating” allegations.

Making payments – the same amount paid to middlemen in questionable aircraft transactions – allows Airbus to avoid admission criminal activitywhich means it can continue to bid for public contracts.

In January 2020, the company reached a plea agreement to pay a total of 3.6 billion euros ($3.7 billion at current rates) in fines to Britain, France and the United States to settle claims. corruption claims against certain contracts involving intermediaries.

But earlier this month, the company said investigations in Libya and Kazakhstan were not included in that deal “because of procedural issues”.

PNF director Jean-Francois Bohnert said the payments were from “a bygone era” at Airbus.

In one case, investigators looking into Libya’s illegal funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 French presidential campaign documented a 2006 sale of 12 Airbus planes to the Moamer Kadhafi regime.

Three weeks after the deal was finalized, a transfer of two million euros was made to a prominent middleman, Alexandre Djouhri, by a former Airbus executive who was accused on March of last year.

Sarkozy, who has faced a series of legal demands since leaving office in 2012, has denied any illegal campaign funding from Libya.

Another corruption investigation involves suspected kickbacks for several contracts between France and Kazakhstan in 2009 and 2010, when Sarkozy was president.

The deals included the purchase of two satellites from Airbus’s former Astrium unit, where investigators discovered traces of a payment of 8.8 million euros to a Singapore account held by a foreign-based company. Hong Kong-based, Caspian Corp., holds.

Caspian was linked to a Tunisian middleman, Lyes Ben Chedli, who was charged in July 2021 along with a former Airbus executive, Olivier Brun.

© 2022 AFP