Having been excluded from a settlement reached with Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) in January 2020, Indonesia is seeking assurances from the United Kingdom that it will share in any future deal resulting from a corruption investigation into Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau), the Financial Times has reported.
Cahyo Muzhar, head of legal administrative affairs at Indonesia’s Ministry of Law and Human Rights, told the newspaper that Jakarta was “very unhappy” at being left out of a EUR3.6 billion euro (USD3.82 billion) bribery settlement that the European manufacturer signed with French, UK, and US authorities.
That deal concluded a probe involving Garuda Indonesia (GA, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta) and its low-cost subsidiary Citilink (QG, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta) in which Airbus admitted to bribery and corruption offences in multiple countries in its efforts to sell aircraft. Jakarta aided the western authorities to uncover bribes paid to executives at the state-owned carrier and reportedly spent around INR2 billion rupiah (USD131 million) on its own investigation.
“The UK did not suffer a financial loss, Indonesia suffered a financial loss,” Muzhar told the Financial Times.
In January 2020, weeks before the Airbus deal was announced, Indonesia’s anti-corruption commission (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi - KPK) claimed that Airbus, Bombardier, and Rolls-Royce had paid bribes to Emirsyah Satar, a former Garuda chief executive, in relation to the acquisition of A320-200s, A330-200s, A330-300s, and CRJ1000s for the carrier and A320s for Citilink. By November, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said it was also investigating Bombardier over the suspected corruption involving Garuda, and it later asked for Indonesia’s assistance.
But Jakarta has not yet dispatched evidence to the SFO that it gathered from its own probe and has requested assurances that its role will be recognised by receiving a share of any settlement proceeds, Indonesian officials told the newspaper. They added that being left out of the Airbus settlement had left deep resentment in the country. Government representatives sent two letters to their counterparts in the UK in the summer of 2020 asking London to compensate Jakarta from Britain’s EUR991 million (USD1.05 billion) share of the EUR3.6 billion Airbus settlement but did not receive an official response.
On Jakarta’s request regarding the Bombardier investigation, UK officials said they would take “Indonesia’s request seriously,” according to Muzhar. “We are confident the UK will come up with something,” he added.
The SFO told the Financial Times: “Our investigation into suspected bribery and corruption at Bombardier is ongoing.”
