Airbus awaits word from the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) on whether or not the agency will pursue an investigation into the manufacturer’s failure to reveal the identity of some intermediaries in applications for export credit financing for certain airline customers.
Last Friday Airbus issued a statement acknowledging “certain inaccuracies” in the applications and that an interruption in UK export funding would likely result. It said it immediately notified the SFO of its internal findings in the interest of transparency.
“The group believes that although some export credit financing will be temporarily unavailable, the affected customers will be able to resume obtaining such financing or refinancing in the near future,” the company said in a written statement. “The group is cooperating with the relevant export credit agencies to resolve this issue as soon as possible.”
UK export financing accounts for only a small portion of Airbus’s overall funding sources. It also draws funding from export credit agencies in France and Germany, the other countries in which it builds most of its components and assembles airplanes. It expects no interruption in funding from those countries’ export credit agencies.
Contacted by AIN, the UK SFO declined to comment on the case.