Airbus Group SE said the UK Serious Fraud Office has opened a criminal investigation into allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption relating to some of its third-party consultants.
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Neither Airbus nor the SFO would comment further on the details.Earlier this year, a United Kingdom government agency suspended the issue of export credits to Airbus, due to discrepancies in declarations by the manufacturer on the use of outside intermediaries during jet sale negotiations.
Airbus Group is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office for alleged fraud, bribery and corruption.
It has now confirmed it is co-operating with SFO investigators in the inquiry, which was opened in July. While the SFO investigation appears to be concerned with third parties, Airbus will be keen to avoid the reputational cloud that has settled over Rolls-Royce, an engine manufacturer for both Boeing and Airbus, which is also separately under an SFO investigation.
“Airbus Group continues to cooperate with the SFO”, the statement concluded.
“We ourselves detected this issue and self-disclosed it to the authorities. Management has taken robust action and is determined to resolve this issue in cooperation with the authorities”, company spokesman Jeremy Greaves said.
Four months ago UK Export Finance stopped funding the company until it could provide assurances over its arrangements with “overseas agents”.
A spokesperson for the SFO said additional details of the probe would not be made public until charges were brought or the investigation is dropped.
French and German agencies have halted export credits to the company also, Reuters reported. The same month the UK Export Finance chose to suspend export credits to the firm, a move followed by France and Germany.
It added that it would closely follow other United Kingdom government agencies’ investigations and “respond accordingly”.
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Germany and France joined the United Kingdom in halting export credits. The newspaper said that senior aerospace officials have however acknowledged that it is hard in some countries to carry out business activities without these intermediaries.
