THE Securities Commission (SC) will examine allegations and review all evidence to determine whether securities laws were breached in the AirAsia-Airbus kickback scandal.

SC chairman Syed Zaid Albar said this is because both AirAsia Group Bhd and AirAsia X Bhd are public-listed.

The two airline groups are listed on Bursa Malaysia’s main market.

 “Under S317A of the Capital Markets & Services Act 2007 (CMSA), a director of a public-listed company (PLC) who does anything with the intention of causing wrongful loss to the PLC or its related corporation commits an offence which is punishable with imprisonment and fine,” he said in a statement today.

Yesterday, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) said it was in touch with British authorities and has started probing the claims in United Kingdom court documents that executives in the two airlines were paid millions by Airbus SE to ensure the European aircraft maker secured sales contracts.

AirAsia has denied any wrongdoing.

It denied news reports citing court documents that certain aircraft order agreements were “improperly” linked to a sponsorship of a sports team linked to its executives.
“AirAsia vigorously rejects and denies any and all allegations of wrongdoing,” it said.

Court documents filed in the UK name AirAsia and AirAsia X as being the recipients of a US$50 million (RM204 million) bribe from Airbus.

Documents in a multibillion dollar settlement between the aircraft manufacturer and anti-graft authorities in Britain, France and the US state that two directors of the low-cost carrier and its long-haul unit were paid the sum for Airbus to secure contracts through corrupt middlemen to sell its aircraft worldwide.

In the settlement, Airbus agreed to pay nearly €1 billion (RM4.5 billion) in the UK, €2.1 billion in France and €530 million in the US.

The documents, sighted by The Malaysian Insight, state that Airbus paid US$50 million and offered US$55 million more to sponsor a sports team linked to two unnamed “key decision makers” at AirAsia and AirAsiaX. – February 2, 2020.