Close coordination among prosecutors was a boon to Airbus, allowing it to efficiently resolve its legal cases in several countries, according to a lawyer for the company. International cooperation gives companies a voice in negotiating a total settlement amount from which prosecutors can claim what they view as a proportionate share, he said. A report by the OECD’s working group on bribery in 2014 noted that at that time no companies had been convicted of bribery. The agency was established by Sapin II to conduct periodic audits of companies’ anticorruption compliance programs. U.S. prosecutors made a similar statement in a smaller, prior joint settlement with French prosecutors involving Société Générale SA, under which the French bank paid a total of $1.34 billion in penalties.

Source: Wall Street Journal February 04, 2020 00:03 UTC