John Mahama is not indicted in Airbus scandal; documents prove

Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace multinational, is to pay a record £3bn in penalties after admitting it had paid huge bribes on an “endemic” basis to land contracts in 20 countries.
The Report

Anti-corruption investigators hailed the result as the largest ever corporate fine for bribery in the world after judges declared that the corruption was “grave, pervasive and pernicious”.
The planemaker agreed to pay the penalties on Friday after reaching settlements with investigators in the UK, France and the US to end inquiries that started four years ago.

In the high court in London, Dame Victoria Sharp, the President of the Queen’s Bench Division, approved the settlement struck with the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

She said: “The seriousness of the criminality in this case hardly needs to be spelled out. As is acknowledged on all sides, it was grave.”

She added that the scale of the wrongdoing demonstrated that bribery was “endemic in two core business areas within Airbus”.

Airbus agrees deal on bribery investigations in UK, US and France
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Allison Clare, for the SFO, told the court the company had paid bribes in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Taiwan and Ghana between 2011 and 2015.

Airbus, which admitted five counts of failing to prevent bribery, had used a network of secret agents to pay large-scale backhanders to officials in foreign countries to land high-value contracts.

This was run by a unit at its French headquarters, which its one-time chief executive Tom Enders reportedly called “bullshit castle”.

French prosecutors examined bribes to other countries including China, Japan, Russia, Kuwait, Brazil and Turkey.

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Hugo Keith, for Airbus, said the settlement will “draw a line under the investigation and the grave historical practices” exposed by prosecutors.

Airbus hopes the settlements, approved by courts in the three countries, will end turbulence within its management which had led to scores of senior executives being sacked. The firm is one of the largest employers in the UK, with a workforce of 13,500.

The penalties will be paid to the governments of the three countries that investigated Airbus, with £1.7bn going to France and £820m going to the UK Treasury.

The settlement surpasses the previous UK record for a corporate fine for bribery – the £671m paid by Rolls-Royce, Britain’s leading multinational manufacturer, in 2017.

Under the deal, known as a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), Airbus will pay the penalties and promise to mend its ways. In return, any prosecution of the firm as a corporation will be suspended for three years.