Former Airbus unit fined £28.1m after pleading guilty to corruption

A unit of Airbus was ordered to pay £28.1m on Wednesday after pleading guilty to corruption in relation to a UK government contract to provide services to the Saudi military.

GPT Special Project Management, a former subsidiary of the European aerospace group, pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to one count of corruption between 2008 and 2010 concerning its dealings in Saudi Arabia following an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

The focus of the SFO probe centred on a £2bn contract to supply communications services to the Saudi Arabian National Guard. The company was fined £7.5m and ordered to hand over £20.6m in a confiscation order. GPT was also ordered to pay £2.2m of the SFO’s legal costs.

Handing down the sentence, Justice Bryan said GPT had “paid substantial sums of money in bribes . . . to high-ranking officials” in order to retain “lucrative contracts in the telecoms world”. He called corruption “a canker on society”.

The SFO announced it had charged GPT last year, eight years after it began investigating the company in the wake of allegations made by former GPT whistleblower Ian Foxley, previously a lieutenant colonel in the British army. 

The sentence marks a rare conviction of a UK company and follows the SFO’s landmark €3.6bn plea deal signed by Airbus to settle bribery and corruption allegations last year. 

The SFO has also charged three individuals with corruption offences including Jeffrey Cook, the former managing director of GPT, and John Mason, a finance officer at two of the company’s subcontractors. Former MoD official Terence Dorothy was charged with aiding and abetting Cook.

The proceedings against the three men are ongoing. 

GPT ceased to operate as an active company last year, after its 10-year contract with the Ministry of Defence wound down, but was kept alive in part so it could be prosecuted as a going concern. 

On Wednesday GPT’s barrister Hugo Keith told the court that Airbus and GPT had not wanted the court “to think there had been any corporate shenanigans whereby GPT would even in part evade the consequences of its criminal wrongdoing”. 

Justice Bryan said the company had earned a reduction on its sentence as a result of having co-operated fully with the investigation.

The GPT case had appeared to be stuck in limbo before 2020, having been put in front of the attorney-general’s office some years previously. The SFO must obtain the attorney-general’s permission to prosecute certain issues, including such diplomatically sensitive ones. 

Susan Hawley, executive director at anti-corruption group Spotlight on Corruption, called the result a “stunning and hard won victory for the SFO”.

The GPT case is unconnected to the plea deal reached between the SFO, US and French authorities and Airbus in January 2020 which related to bribery and corruption in subsidiaries of the European aerospace and defence group. 

Airbus said its co-operation with the SFO and GPT’s acceptance of responsibility “reflects a commitment to confront and learn from the mistakes of the past and build on the significant compliance reforms implemented” both before and after the deferred prosecution agreement. 

The resolution reached by GPT marks the final part of the SFO’s investigation into Airbus and would allow the company to “move forward”, it added. The MoD said “defence has a zero-tolerance approach to fraud, bribery and corruption”.