Airbus fined record US$4 billion for bribery.
- The largest-ever foreign bribery settlement
- AirAsia and AirAsiaX received US$50 million bribe from Airbus
- Airbus sponsored a sports team linked to two unnamed AirAsia “key decision makers” US$55 million
- An AirAsia executive wrote an angry email to Airbus, chasing for kickback to be paid
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has already started probing the AirAsia-Airbus kickback scandal implicated by a UK court.
MACC chief commissioner Latheefa Koya said in a statement today that the anti-graft body is in touch with the UK authorities and is already investigating the matter.
“Under the MACC Act we are empowered, and have jurisdiction, to investigate any act of corruption committed by any Malaysian citizen or permanent resident in any place outside Malaysia,” she said.
AirAsia and AirAsiaX were named in court documents in the UK as being the recipients of a US$50 million (RM240 million) bribe from European plane maker Airbus SE.
The documents, part of a multi-billion dollar settlement between the aircraft manufacturer and anti-graft authorities in Britain, France and the US, stated that two directors and/or employees of the low-cost carrier and its long-haul unit were paid the sum for Airbus to secure contracts through corrupt middlemen to sell its aircraft worldwide.
The European plane maker admitted to “endemic levels of bribery across its international business”.
It had handed over more than 30 million documents to investigators.
In the settlement, Airbus agreed to pay nearly €1 billion (RM4.5 billion) in the UK, €2.1 billion in France and €530 million in the US.
The documents stated that Airbus paid US$50 million (RM204 million) and offered US$55 million more to sponsor a sports team linked to two unnamed “key decision-makers” at AirAsia and AirAsiaX.
The sports team was jointly owned by AirAsia Executive 1 and AirAsia Executive 2 but was legally unrelated to AirAsia and AirAsia X.
The legal documents showed that the further inducements were prevented by an October 2014 freeze on payments.
AirAsia and AirAsia X were significant customers of Airbus at the time of the offences.
The airlines ordered 180 aircraft from Airbus, with the executives described as being “rewarded in respect of the aircraft order”, which the documents said was “secured by way of improper payments”.
The disclosures, made public after a nearly four-year investigation spanning sales to more than a dozen overseas markets, came as courts on both sides of the Atlantic formally approved settlements that lift a legal cloud that has hung over Europe’s largest aerospace group for years.
“It was a pervasive and pernicious bribery scheme in various divisions of Airbus SE that went on for a number of years,” US District judge Thomas Hogan said.
UK’s The Telegraph cited an angry email from one of the executives to a senior Airbus official.
“You owe me four million already and I’m owed 16 million in total. This should have been paid ages ago when I bought the first 60 aircraft. I want my money,” the email read.
Apart from Malaysia, the UK part of the settlement involves bribery allegations in Indonesia, Taiwan, Sri Lanka and Ghana, between 2011 and 2015.
The deal, effectively a corporate plea bargain, means Airbus has avoided criminal prosecution that would have risked it being barred from public contracts in the United States and the European Union – a massive blow for a major defence and space supplier.
Prosecutors said individuals could still face criminal charges, however.
The US Department of Justice said the deal was the largest ever foreign bribery settlement.
Meanwhile, Transport Minister Anthony Loke today refused to comment on allegations of bribery involving Airbus and executives of AirAsia and AirAsia X.
He said reporters should ask AirAsia for comments as he had also come to know of the issue through news reports on the issue.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said.