A former executive with the European aerospace giant Airbus has been placed under formal investigation in France for corruption, criminal conspiracy and money laundering in the latest development of a judicial investigation into the suspected illegal Libyan funding of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign, Mediapart can reveal.
Edouard Ullmo, a former vice-president of regional business development at Airbus, was arrested and taken into custody on March 14th at the luxury hotel complex Les Airelles in the French Alps ski resort of Courchevel, where he was holidaying with his wife.
Ullmo was subsequently placed under investigation led by Paris-based judge Aude Buresi, who is one of two magistrates in charge of the now nine-year-old judicial probe into the suspected financing of Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign by the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Sarkozy has firmly denied receiving Libyan funding.
Under French law, a magistrate can place an individual under investigation only if “serious” and – or – “concordant” evidence has been found that they committed a crime. At the end of the judicial procedure, charges are either dropped or brought, and in the latter case the defendant is sent for trial.
The events involving Ullmo relate to the sale by Airbus of 12 passenger aircraft to the Gaddafi regime in 2006. Under formal questioning before the judicial investigation, senior Airbus management figures have firmly denied the suspicion that Alexandre Djouhri, a French business intermediary who for decades has been personally close to Sarkozy, was paid a commission for the sale of the aircraft, although they have confirmed that Djourhi demanded payment of 12 million euros over the deal. Djourhi, meanwhile, has denied receiving any money from the sale.
In early 2020, Djouhri was extradited to France from Britain after a two-year legal battle. Arriving in France, the 63-year-old was then placed under investigation for his suspected role in the organisation of the Libyan funding of Sarkozy’s campaign, and also for “corruption” over a 2008 payment, in collusion with Gaddafi’s chief of staff, Bashir Saleh, of 500,000 euros made to Sarkozy’s then chief of staff at the Élysée Palace, Claude Guéant.
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According to statements given to the judicial investigation by several former Airbus managers, several months after he received that payment in 2008, Guéant placed pressure on a senior executive of the aerospace group for it to make a payment to Djouhri in connection with the 2006 Airbus sales to Tripoli.
Judge Buresi’s investigation established that Djouhri had opened an account with a Singapore branch of the Swiss bank UBS, and that in November 2006, three weeks after the sale of the Airbus planes to Libya, that account was credited with a sum of 2 million euros. The French probe learnt that the transfer was made on the order of “Network”, but it took several years for the Singapore authorities to finally provide further information requested by Buresi about the transfer.
Towards the end of 2021, the French investigators were informed by Singapore that the transfer was ordered by a company called Network Aviation Ltd, one of whose managers, Sunate B. (full identity withheld), worked as an agent for Airbus for the South-East Asia region.
Subsequently questioned in writing by the French probe, Sunate B. said he ordered the 2-million-euro payment into Djouhri’s account at the specific request of Edouard Ullmo, which was made during what he described as “an ordinary meeting”. Sunate B. said the help he gave to Ullmo and Airbus was that of a “commercial partner”.
In his statement given to investigators in March, Ullmo, who since leaving Airbus has been involved in business affairs with another former senior executive of the company, Jean-Paul Gut, said he “categorically” denied giving the instruction for the payment to Djouhri. He said that he became a contact of Djouhri’s in order to ensure that the latter did not receive money from Airbus.
Contacted by Mediapart, Ullmo’s lawyer, Charlotte Plantin, said that the placing under investigation of her client was “based on no serious foundation, and we firmly count upon the investigation, whose confidentiality o we respect, to establish this”.
“Edouard Ullmo has not understood the accusations he was the subject of,” added Plantin, “he still does not understand them after reading the case file.”
Also contacted by Mediapart, a spokesman for Airbus said it is cooperating with the judicial probe and has positively responded to requests for information from the investigators, adding that because the case was ongoing, “Airbus has no other comment to make about this subject”.
Alexandre Djouhri’s lawyer, Pierre Cornut-Gentille, did not respond to Mediapart’s request for comment.
The investigation has now also established that in 2010, Airbus made a further payment in connection with the 2006 Airbus deal with Libya, this time amounting to 4 million euros paid to a Lebanon-based company run by Saleh J. (whose full identity is protected). He was both an acquaintance of Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, and of Alexandre Djouhri. Those funds were then immediately transferred to a company registered in the British Virgin Islands and which had an account with a bank run by one of Djouhri’s business associates.
In October 2010, Saleh J. met with Claude Guéant in the latter’s office at the Élysée Palace. No official reason for the meeting appears in the Élysée archives. Meanwhile, the judicial investigation has officially noted that Airbus has been unable to provide material evidence of any service given by Saleh J. in the Airbus deal that would have justified such a sum.
Questioned by officers from the French police’s anti-corruption and financial and tax crime agency, OCLCIFF, who are working under the authority of the magistrates in charge of the Gaddafi funding probe, Saleh J. confirmed that he was a close acquaintance of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, and that he had known Alexandre Djouhri for a long time. He denied any involvement in corruption, and insisted that he had carried out work on behalf of Airbus in Libya, although he could not provide any documents as evidence of his involvement in the 2006 sale.
In January 2020, Airbus announced it had reached a settlement with investigators in France, the US and Britain over a number of various probes into its alleged corruption, after which it paid 2 billion euros to the French treasury in exchange for the abandoning of any further proceedings. But that agreement with the French public prosecution services did not include its implication in the Libyan funding case, in which Airbus now finds itself facing possible prosecution.
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- The original French version of the above report can be found here.