Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

At a basic level I think it falls down to fundamentally different conceptions of what is a "business" versus individuals, families, organizations of many types. What we call "lie" and "theft" in the West might be innocuous or praised in the East (think "great poker player", "bold move"), and no regulation will make each side suddenly re-order their hierarchy of values, and the centennial legal system that surely goes with it.

I don't know where the solution lies, if any, but that's one hell of a cultural clash.

That is not the same as more coincidental, opportunistic bribery the likes of dictatorships or local lords, the chaos tax. That's more of a temporary friction that can (and should) be dealt with more swiftly — had we the global political will to do so. It's nowhere near as hard a problem as the above cultural matter.

Edit: self-censored a bad initial

A particularly nasty aspect of this story, alluded to at the bottom but not made explicit, is that Airbus was taking massive export credits (in the UK, they got the lion's share of the budget).

It was only in the UK that Airbus was required to actually required to produce documentation about the customer, and the scheme was only uncovered when someone at UKEF realised that Airbus wasn't doing this and the govt had been giving out hundreds of millions to corrupt politicians.

Also, the timeline here is incredible. As soon as the UK announced their investigation, and Airbus was banned from receiving credits...they were in negotiations to resume funding, and (somehow) Enders only lost his job 3 years later (and even the UK has turned back on the money spigot...although this time with sheepish promises about trying to fund a company other than Airbus through UKEF).

Airbus is everything that is wrong with the corporate world. Run by politicians, hopelessly corrupt, always spinning, and receiving massive subsidies by dint of their impact on local job markets.

Lobbying doesn’t have to be bribery, but in America it absolutely is.

But of all the industries, big planes should be among the easiest to clean up: there’s only two participants in this prisoners‘ dilemma, and they are both, theoretically, under the purview of rigorous enforcement in countries governed by law.