Sally March (sjmarch10@gmail.com) is Director, Drummond March & Co, in London, UK.

In January, Airbus agreed to pay $4 billion in penalties in France, Britain, and the US to settle corruption and export control charges and avoid a bar on government business, which is, literally, its license to operate. The amount set a record and a precedent for France as an enforcer. The US district judge called it “a pervasive and pernicious bribery scheme.”^[1] Some lawyers involved spoke of “drawing a line under” the investigation. No; as Winston Churchill might have said, this is just the end of the beginning.