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Former Garuda Indonesia CEO Jailed for Eight Years for Bribery

AKARTA (Reuters) – An Indonesian court on Friday jailed Emirsyah Satar, a former chief executive of Garuda Indonesia, for bribery and money laundering related to procurement of planes and engines from Airbus and Rolls-Royce, his laywer said.

Satar’s lawyer Luhut Pangaribuan said his client had been given an eight-year sentence and fined S$2 million ($1.4 million) by the country’s corruption court.

Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) had indicted Satar, CEO of Garuda from 2005 to 2014, over payments from a businessman via a third party for the procurement by Garuda Indonesia of Roll-Royce Trent 700 engines and Airbus A320 and A330 planes.

The indictment also related to the procurement of Airbus planes for PT Citilink Indonesia, a unit of Garuda.

In 2017 Rolls-Royce agreed to pay authorities more than $800 million to settle charges after an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and Britain’s Serious Fraud Office into alleged bribery of officials in six countries in schemes that lasted more than a decade.

Airbus in February this year agreed to pay a record $4 billion in fines after reaching a plea bargain with prosecutors in Britain, France and United States over alleged bribery and corruption stretching back at least 15 years.

Satar, who had previously denied wrongdoing, will decide next week whether to appeal against his sentence, said Pangaribuan.

($1 = 1.4139 Singapore dollars)

(Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by David Goodman)

Record $4 Billion Airbus Fine Draws Line Under ‘Pervasive’ Bribery

FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac near Toulouse

PARIS/LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Airbus <EADSY> bribed public officials and hid the payments as part of a pattern of worldwide corruption, prosecutors said on Friday as the European planemaker agreed a record $4 billion settlement with France, Britain and the United States.

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,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said.

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 European Union – a massive blow for a major defence and space supplier.

Prosecutors said individuals could still face criminal charges, however.

Airbus, whose shares closed down 1%, has been investigated by French and British authorities for alleged corruption over jet sales dating back more than a decade. It has also faced U.S. inquiries over suspected violations of U.S. export controls.

“In reaching this agreement today, we are helping Airbus to turn the page definitively” on corrupt past practices, French prosecutor Jean-Francois Bohnert said.

France’s financial prosecutor said the company had also agreed to three years “light compliance monitoring” by the country’s anti-corruption agency.

The U.S. Department of Justice said the deal was the largest ever foreign bribery settlement.

CODE NAME ‘VAN GOGH’

In a packed hearing at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, an Airbus lawyer said the settlements “draw a clear line under the investigation and under the grave historic practices”.

Outlining detailed findings, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said Airbus had hired the wife of a Sri Lankan Airlines executive as its intermediary and misled Britain’s UKEF export credit agency over her name and gender, while paying $2 million to her company. The airline could not be reached for comment.

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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/airbus-pay-4-billion-settle-152542295.html