With all the contracts airbus got in 1998 and to lose 200 million tells me they lowballed the bids to win the work and get their foot in the door.
It doesn't seem like that was their only tactic to "get their foot in the door...read on...
February 23, 1999
World-Wide
U.S. Says Bribes Often Taint
Bids for Foreign Contracts
By GLENN R. SIMPSON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government received
allegations that bribes were used to influence the outcome of
239 international contract competitions between May 1994
and April 1998.
The data help explain the Clinton administration's aggressive
push for new international agreements against corruption. A
lot is at stake: The contracts totaled $108 billion. The
findings were provided by several U.S. officials, who
refused to confirm the source of the information. The
Central Intelligence Agency has been collecting such data in
recent years as it has adopted a more active role in
economic affairs.
Airbus Is Frequently Cited
Most of the allegations were against corporations based in
wealthy industrialized nations, and a handful of large
multinationals were the subject of repeated allegations. The
European consortium Airbus Industrie was frequently cited,
according to the U.S. officials.
Airbus has faced such accusations over the years "from
various jealous parties," but doesn't engage in such
practices, said spokeswoman Mary Anne Greczyn. "We
operate on a daily basis with an entirely clear conscience."
About half the allegedly tainted contracts involved military
procurement. Other prominent sectors were aerospace,
communications, infrastructure, energy and transportation.
On the receiving end, policy makers tend to be more
corrupt than lawmakers: About 70% of the alleged bribes
were offered or paid to ministry or executive-branch
officials. In the U.S., the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act prohibits bribery across borders.
Bribes are usually effective: In competitions with known
outcomes, the company that allegedly paid a bribe won the
contract, according to the findings. There isn't always honor
among bribe recipients, however: It's not uncommon for
companies that pay bribes to lose out to competitors that
pay more.
About 75% of the cases involve allegations of bribe-paying
by companies that are based in countries belonging to the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
which Monday opened a conference on the role of
corporations in transnational bribery. Until recently, most
OECD countries hadn't any laws against such bribery. But
last week, a major OECD bribery treaty that commits
member countries to such laws took effect.
Drive by Gore
A second corruption conference, focusing on the role of
judicial and law-enforcement officials, will open here
Wednesday. That meeting is being organized by Vice
President Al Gore, who is leading a drive to make
international corruption a major agenda item in the Clinton
administration's final two years.
U.S. officials said they have been disappointed in the lack
of progress that some countries, particularly France, have
made on the treaty. They also criticized what they said were
weak penalties in Japan's new antibribery law: as much as
three years in jail and a $20,000 fine for individuals, and a
maximum fine of $2 million for corporations. A spokesman
for the Japanese government wasn't available for comment.
France has neither ratified the treaty nor taken up
implementing legislation, and it has declined to share drafts
of its legislation with the U.S. Denis Matton, a spokesman
for the French government, said the French parliament is
expected to take up the treaty this spring. He said the
legislation will include penalties of as much as $200,000 in
fines and 10 years in jail. While France has recently
outlawed taking tax deductions for bribes, the restriction
won't take effect until the treaty is ratified. Even then, a U.S.
official said, it won't cover contracts already in progress.
France and Germany have been cited in internal U.S.
government reports as the countries whose companies pay
the most bribes. U.S. officials said they are pleased with the
actions taken by Germany, which this month implemented a
tough new antibribery law. "France is the biggie,"
Commerce Secretary William Daley said in an interview.
But in recent weeks, the treaty has become increasingly
controversial in France. "Through the French media, many
French businessmen and some politicians are taking a hard
line, indicating the entire antibribery campaign is a ploy by
the U.S. government and U.S. companies to regain
competitive advantage," said Seth Goldschlager, French
co-director of the Coalition for Fair International Business
Practices, a group of multinationals pushing for strong
antibribery laws.
Mr. Daley said the scandal over alleged bribes paid by Salt
Lake City to win the 2002 Olympics, currently the subject of
a major Justice Department inquiry, shows that "we're not
just lecturing people."
In a speech to the OECD conference, Mr. Daley called on
four European holdouts -- France, Belgium, Italy and the
Netherlands -- to ratify the treaty. ''They had promised to
ratify it by the end of 1998,'' he noted.
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