Senior Airbus executives continued to discuss controversial Kuwait helicopters contracts with a middleman while the European aerospace giant was under investigation for allegedly using intermediaries in several other countries to bribe customers, leaked correspondence shows.
Some of these messages suggested Airbus remained willing to pay the invoices of the middleman, Farid Abdelnour, who later cited the correspondence to win an arbitration ruling that required the company to pay him 12 million euros.
Abdelnour, a 65-year-old consultant, was involved in negotiations for a contract reportedly worth 1 billion euros to provide Kuwait’s Ministry of Defense with 30 military Caracal helicopters in 2016, as well as talks over a separate contract for civilian helicopters.
In 2020, Airbus struck deals with French, U.K., and U.S. authorities to avoid prosecution over suspect payments the company made to middlemen to secure contracts in at least a dozen countries.
The deals are known as “deferred prosecution agreements,” which suspend criminal proceedings in exchange for the defendant meeting certain conditions and paying a fine — in this case, $3.9 billion, which was a record at the time.
Abdelnour and the Kuwait contracts do not appear to have been included in the French, U.K., and U.S. proceedings. But in January this year, a Kuwaiti parliamentary committee published the findings of its own investigation into the Caracal contract, and accused Airbus of “fraud and deception” in its handling of the deal.
Airbus Helicopters stopped making payments to intermediaries in the spring of 2015, according to a judicial agreement published by French prosecutors.
But correspondence obtained by the French outlet Revue XXI and shared with OCCRP shows that Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, who was head of the company’s helicopters subsidiary at the time, was still sending emails to Abdelnour about the Kuwait deals well into 2016.
Abaca Press/Alamy Live News
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury.
As late as May 2016, another Airbus executive was sending Abdelnour messages suggesting that Airbus was ready to pay his invoices.
Some of the correspondence was later used in an arbitration case in the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce, where Abdelnour brought a complaint against Airbus for non-payment of invoices.
In 2020, the judge in that case ruled that the messages showed that Airbus and Abdelnour had “carried out business as usual” throughout 2015 and 2016 — up until a December 2016 meeting when an Airbus executive told Abdelnour he could no longer work for the company.
Airbus was ordered to pay Abdelnour 12 million euros. After Kuwaiti officials learned of the arbitration, they looked into whether the payment constituted “commissions” on the contract, despite assurances by Airbus none had been or would be paid, according to leaked correspondence between Airbus and the Kuwaiti government.
Abdelnour’s lawyer and an Airbus representative declined to comment. Faury and a representative of the Kuwaiti government did not respond to reporters’ questions.
‘Closely Coordinated’
In October 2015, Abdelnour sent a furious message to Faury, demanding a response to his unanswered calls and emails at a time when the Kuwait contract still hung in the balance.
Faury wrote back quickly: “I would like to thank you for your action and your support, which are crucial for us. … As you rightly point out, to succeed it is important to be more responsive and more closely coordinated than we have been up to now.”
At the end of the year, Airbus wrapped up an internal “compliance review,” concluding that there were extensive issues with its intermediaries around the world. By 2017, media reports indicated Airbus faced legal issues with more than 20 such middlemen.
Airbus self-reported the findings in early 2016 to British authorities, who in turn alerted the French and American authorities.
In May 2016 — shortly after Airbus reported the issues to the U.K. — a senior Airbus executive, Marwan Lahoud, wrote to Abdelnour to tell him that an additional due diligence check was complete and they could conclude negotiations “related to our cooperation in support of helicopter campaigns, after you have completed the restructuring of your group in accordance with our requests.”
The details of the “requests” were not spelled out. But Lahoud’s letter showed the company was ready to pay Abdelnour’s invoices, despite the apparent freeze on such payments after the internal audit.
“You have accepted, and for this I thank you, to reconsider this level of remuneration and, after tough negotiations, you have agreed to 48 million euros payable over two years,” Lahoud wrote. “Administrative deadlines prevent the conclusion of the corresponding contracts today. Very soon we will be in a position to finalize the execution of this matter.”
Lahoud also left open the possibility of future contracts: “It is understood that in the event of future cooperation on new campaigns, the level of remuneration will be lower.” (Lahoud did not respond to questions sent by reporters.)
Rory Donaldson, the head of the business integrity program at Transparency International U.K., said the correspondence could prove awkward for Airbus if it showed it was still working with an intermediary after self-reporting to the British authorities.
“To qualify for a deferred prosecution agreement and reduced fines, a company must fully cooperate with the investigating authorities,” Donaldson told OCCRP. “Once it has self-reported, the company should of course cease all corrupt activities, regardless of profitability.”
Airbus Helicopters sealed the Caracal deal with Kuwait in August 2016, a month after the U.K. and France began their investigations.
But despite Lahoud’s assurances, by October 2016 Abdelnour apparently had not been paid for his work on multiple Airbus contracts. Responding to an angry email from Abdelnour that month, Faury apologized for “the inconvenience caused by the ongoing process in our Group.”
“I continue to value very much our relationship,” Faury wrote from his BlackBerry. “I am really sorry for this inconvenience and I trust the Group is doing its very best to resolve the issue. As you know, making good progress in Kuwait is of superior importance to me and Airbus Helicopters. Thank you for your continuous support against the backdrop of this complex situation.”
In May 2017, after the payments still failed to arrive, Abdelnour took the company to arbitration, eventually winning the case in November 2020.
Falcon Photography, Flickr
The H225M Caracal helicopter used the Kuwait Air Force and the Kuwait National Guard.
‘Crime of Profiteering’
In January 2020, Airbus struck an agreement with U.S., U.K., and French authorities to pay more than $3.9 billion to defer prosecution.
French prosecutors looked into Airbus’s activities in Kuwait, but they did not make up part of the case against the company, according to France’s national financial prosecutor. However the probes caught the attention of Kuwaiti authorities, who launched their own investigation into the helicopter contract in late 2017.
This inquiry culminated in January this year when Kuwait’s parliament announced their findings, saying that Airbus had paid “commissions” to obtain the contract despite vowing not to make any such payments.
Leaked messages from late 2023 show that Kuwaiti officials at the Ministry of Defense had a long list of grievances related to the contract, including issues with spare parts shortages, an engine malfunction, and untrained pilots and technicians.
According to a signed declaration submitted to Kuwaiti authorities, obtained by reporters, Airbus had to disclose information about any past or future “payment of commission or its equivalent.” Faury wrote “none” beside each of six bullet points requesting details on commissions, before signing his name at the bottom.
When Kuwaiti Ministry of Defense officials got wind of the arbitration judgment in Abdelnour’s favor, they insisted that Airbus turn over unredacted copies of the judgment, leaked messages show.
It’s not clear if Airbus ever did so. But almost five years earlier — while the case was in progress — the company told the Kuwaiti Ministry of Defense it could not discuss the arbitration in detail and refuted Abdelnour’s claims to be owed any payment.
A draft copy of a parliamentary report on the Airbus deal with Kuwait obtained by OCCRP and Revue XXI holds eight senior Kuwaiti military and government officials responsible for actions and behaviors that “resulted in many damages to the ministry and public funds.” It suspects seven of them of “profiteering,” and one of those seven of “the crime of concealing a fact about the disclosure of commissions paid in contracts entered into by the State.”
A summary of the final report, published on Kuwait’s National Assembly website, claimed that 349 million euros in public funds had been "wasted" on the Airbus contract, and said "some officials in the Ministry [of Defense]" had "covered up" Airbus's "fraud and deception" over the payment of commissions.
It was not clear if Kuwaiti law enforcement took any action after the parliamentary committee’s report. Kuwait’s parliament was dissolved in May 2024, and so the committee could not be reached for comment.