$99 mn fine for 'unaccounted payments' in Eurofighter sale to Austria

Over the preceding week, India’s political landscape has been roiled by accusations that the government favoured French aerospace vendor, Dassault, with a multi-billion order for 36 Rafale fighters, ignoring a cheaper bid belated submitted by European consortium, Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH (hereafter Eurofighter) for its Typhoon fighter.

But now Eurofighter too is battling damaging scrutiny over corruption allegations. On Friday, German prosecutors ordered Airbus to pay Euro 81.25 million ($99 million) to settle charges that the firm bribed Austrian politicians in 2003 to buy the Typhoon in a contract worth $2 billion.

Eurofighter is made up of aerospace corporations from four