Airbus Denies Fraud Allegations On Eurofighter Deal By Austrian Defense Minister

European Aerospace giant Airbus on Monday formally rejected fraud allegations levelled by Austria over a two-billion-euro ($2.3 billion) deal for Eurofighter jets, calling out the accusations “factitious and legally groundless”.

Airbus on Monday said Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil had misused the judiciary system by publicly denouncing it and the company’s lawyer Peter Gauweiler said he had advised it to hold the minister liable for potential damages resulting from his comments.

Doskozil’s office sued Airbus and the Eurofighter consortium in February for allegedly deliberately misleading Vienna about the purchase price, delivery times and technical equipment of the 18 jets in 2003 contract.

To raise such allegations, combined with damage claims running into the millions, 16 years after the tender and eight years after delivery of the last Eurofighter aircraft, appears “highly abstruse and politically motivated”, the statement says.

“The Defence Minister’s sole intent here is to create a scenario of intimidation in order to generate civil law concessions which would otherwise not be achievable through a proper legal process,” Kleinschmidt said.