This year, athletes from around the world are scheduled to gather in China for the winter Olympics. As always at international competitions, officials will be cracking down on cheaters. Anyone who has been bending the rules—say, taking performance-enhancing drugs—will be sent away and banned from future competitions.
It seems reasonable to apply the same policies to defense contractors. Cheat, and you will lose your current contracts and be banned from future ones until you can prove you are clean.
By this standard, Airbus should be sent home from the American defense market and banned from future contracts. In 2020, the U.S. Justice Department announced that Airbus “agreed to pay combined penalties of more than $3.9 billion to resolve foreign bribery charges with authorities in the United States, France and the United Kingdom.”
This isn’t some minor violation, as it would be if an athlete tried to jump the gun and get out of the gate first. This indicates coordinated, long-term efforts to cheat, like an entire team of athletes taking drugs to help them be bigger and faster. And as indicated by the size of the fine, it is the largest such case the department has ever resolved.
The plot to cheat was uncovered because of teamwork on the part of several governments. “This coordinated resolution was possible thanks to the dedicated efforts of our foreign partners at the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom and the PNF in France,” a lawyer on the Justice Department’s team announced. “The Department will continue to work aggressively with our partners across the globe to root out corruption, particularly corruption that harms American interests.”
It makes sense we would work with allies on projects like this. When there is fair competition, governments can be more confident they are getting the best possible military equipment. However, when a contractor is allowed to cheat, there is no guarantee it is delivering quality equipment. Maybe it is paying bribes simply because its platforms don’t perform. That would put our warriors in harm’s way.
It is also worth taking note of where the cheating occurred. “Airbus engaged in a multi-year and massive scheme to corruptly enhance its business interests by paying bribes in China and other countries and concealing those bribes,” the Justice news release points out. While we can say many things about China, we certainly cannot claim it is allied with the United States. It may well be our biggest competitor in the 21st century.
Yet here is Airbus, a contractor that sells products to the American military, paying bribes so it can be active in China.
It is worth wondering whether the contractor shared anything other than money with the Chinese. Perhaps it provided insider information on the weapon systems it sells to the U.S. military. How could we ever know? What we are sure of is that the company was cheating to enter the Chinese market, and the U.S. government knows, because it uncovered the fraud and is prosecuting it.
“International corruption involving sensitive U.S. defense technology presents a particularly dangerous combination,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General David P. Burns said in a news release. The Airbus case “demonstrates the Department’s continuing commitment to ensuring that those who violate our export control laws are held to account.”
That is great talk. But it needs to be backed up with tough actions. Just as we would take away a medal winner’s award if it turned out the winner had been cheating, we need to take away Airbus’ awards and ban it from future defense contracts. The ban doesn’t need to last forever, but it needs to be long enough to make the French company suffer for its sins. Anything else would be unfair to our military warriors.
Regina Thomson is the president of the Colorado Issues Coalition, as well as president of The Right Voices.
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