The European aircraft manufacturer agreed, Wednesday, November 30, to pay a fine of 15.9 million euros in France in order to avoid criminal prosecution for suspicion of corruption.
Airbus undertakes to pay a fine of 15.9 million euros in France, in order to avoid any criminal proceedings. The European aircraft manufacturer is suspected of corruption, concerning the sale of aircraft mainly in Libya and Kazakhstan between 2006 and 2011.
During a public hearing on November 18, the President of the Paris Court of Justice, Stéphane Noël, approved a legal agreement in the public interest (Cjip), concluded between Airbus and the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), providing for payment by the group a fine of 15,856,044 euros. This agreement was validated this Wednesday, November 30.
For the magistrates of the PNF, who noted on the one hand the “repeated character of corrupt acts” of the company and on the other, the era “Ancient“of the alleged facts and the”cooperation” of the group during the investigation, it is a fine “equitable, fair, appropriate“. The penalty is not worth recognition of guilt and the European giant can therefore always access public markets.
This fine, of a relatively modest amount, is in addition to that which had already been set in a previous Cjip, validated on January 31, 2020.
Airbus had then already agreed to pay a fine of 3.6 billion euros, including 2.1 billion euros to France, to avoid prosecution in the French, British and American courts, in an investigation into “irregularities“relating in particular to commercial agents involved in contracts for the sale of aircraft or military equipment.
The Cjip which has just been recorded is “additoinal” to the first, and concerns a same “fraudulent scheme” of a “bygone era“for facts that could not be introduced in 2020 for”procedural grounds”underlined the national financial prosecutor Jean-François Bohnert.
The agreement does not provide for a compliance plan this time, such a program having already been put in place during the previous Cjip. The facts retained were updated within the framework of three judicial investigations carried out in Paris.
The first concerns suspicions of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. Opened in 2013, it became interested in the sale at the end of 2006 of twelve Airbus planes to the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
The second judicial investigation, known as “Kazakhgate”, opened in March 2013, looks into suspicions of corruption and illegal commissions paid to intermediaries on the sidelines of contracts concluded between France and Kazakhstan between 2009 and 2010, under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.
These contracts related to the supply of helicopters, a satellite center, two satellites and 295 locomotives, for an amount announced at the time of two billion euros.
Finally, the third judicial investigation concerns suspicions of corruption by the manager of a private company and his son for contracts in particular in the Czech Republic, Kuwait and Turkmenistan. The amount of the fine corresponds to the total commissions paid to the intermediaries during the sale of the devices in Libya (6 million euros) and in Kazakhstan (9.8 million euros), according to the PNF, specifying that within the framework of the third instruction it could not be established that commissions had actually been paid.
With AFP.