International reports have revealed that Airbus has bribed a wife of an executive of SriLankan Airlines to secure an A350 aircraft deal. The scam is a part of Airbus’s massive scheme to offer and pay bribes to secure deals in many countries, disclosures in courts in Washington DC, Paris and London have revealed. “Airbus staff also bribed directors of TransAsia Airways, Taiwan’s first private airline, and SriLankan Airlines,” UK Financial Times reported. “Airbus engaged the wife of a SriLanka Airlines executive as an agent, the court documents state, although she had no aerospace expertise.” According to reports, a some $2 m was paid to her company out of $16.84 m (Rs. 2.5 bn [2015]) that was agreed to be paid to influence the airline’s purchase of 10 aircraft. "To disguise her identity, Airbus employees misled the UK export credit agency about her name and gender, the investigation found.”

According to Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) Executive Director Asoka Obeyesekere the fallout from this deal is widely reported to have cost in excess of 17 billion rupees (USD 116mn [2015]) in cancellation penalties.

Europe’s aerospace champion agreed to pay €3.6 bn in penalties to regulators in France, the UK and the US. Many of the bribes were paid through shell companies set up by executives working for an autonomous strategy and marketing unit. This unit, which managed a corps of middlemen in export markets, concealed the bribes by creating fraudulent contracts, accepting fake invoices for services never delivered, and creating false activity reports, Airbus admitted in the US.