A unit of Airbus has pleaded guilty to corruption as part of the UK prosecutor’s probe into work it carried out for the Saudi Arabian National Guard.
The Serious Fraud Office charged GPT Special Project Management with corruption between January 2007 and December 2012 last year.
The unit pleaded guilty at a hearing Wednesday held at Southwark Crown Court. Sentencing, which is likely to be a fine, is expected to be determined later.
The probe into contracts awarded to GPT for work carried out for the Gulf country was opened in August 2012. GPT is a UK company and subsidiary of Airbus that operated in Saudi Arabia and ended operations in April 2020.
At the centre of the prosecutor’s eight-year probe were allegations the Riyadh-based subsidiary paid bribes to win a £2 billion ($2.8 billion) contract to provide services and training for the Saudi Arabian National Guard on behalf of the UK defence department. The case has been particularly politically sensitive because of the British government’s involvement and was delayed after the Attorney General sought external legal advice on the case.
“This is a stunning and hard-won victory for the SFO, after years of successive Attorney Generals sitting on this case for political reasons,” said Susan Hawley, executive director of Spotlight on Corruption. The transparency group has called for an urgent Parliamentary investigation into the defence department’s involvement in the scandal.
Airbus and the SFO declined to immediately comment. The defence ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Airbus, in a letter to the court, expressed its wish to “draw a line under this historic wrongdoing,” Hugo Keith, GPT’s lawyer, said at Wednesday’s hearing. “This guilty plea will settle the SFO’s last remaining line of investigation into an Airbus company.”
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