The agent had dealt with Airbus as late as October 2015, the filings said.
While UK laws allow agents to be paid commissions, they must be experienced independent consultants, with no connections to the customer, who can canvass business and bring in customers.
In 2013, Airbus had engaged the wife of a SriLankan Airlines employee, who had no aerospace experience, as a business partner (BP) or agent through a company registered in Brunei identified as Intermediary I, in court documents.
“Airbus employees offered up to 16.84 million dollars to the company of Intermediary 1 to influence the purchase of 10 Airbus aircraft and the lease of an additional 4 aircraft,” the documents said.
“In fact only US$2mn of the 16.84 million was paid to the company of Intermediary I.”
Airbus had asked for export credits from UK Export Finance, which had raised concerns over the payment to the agent.
“To disguise the identity of the BP, Airbus employees misled UKEF as to her name and sex,” the filing said.
On March 29, 2013 Airbus had signed a deal with Intermediary 1, for the sale of 6 A330 aircraft, 4 A350 aircraft and the lease of an additional 4 A350 aircraft.
The intermediary was to be paid 1 million for the delivery of each A330 aircraft and 1.16 million dollars for each A350 aircraft leased by SriLankan Airlines.
On October 30, 2015, Airbus signed another agreement, saying Intermediary 1 would get 5 million US dollars if SriLankan did not buy any competitor aircraft before that date.
British, French and US authorities had conducted a joint investigation into Airbus over bribes offered to various airlines.
The SriLankan probe was done by UK’s Serious Frauds Office, which also investigated deals in Taiwan, Malaysia, Ghana, and Indonesia.
Airbus will pay 991 million Euros to UK, 2.06 billion US dollars to France and 557 million dollars to the US, or a total of 3.6 billon Euros.
(economynext)
