Austrian Typhoon deal corrupt?

The Austrian authorities are investigating the offset deals involved in the contract.

Excerpts from aviationweek:

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/awx_11_16_2012_p0-518108.xml

“Austria specified at the time of the tender that the supplier would have to guarantee counter-deals that would pour twice the value of the jet contract into the local economy through suppliers, related services or education projects.”

That’s simple and straightforward to me.

“Austria’s Economy Ministry, which is responsible for approving the counter-trades, said it was awaiting the results of prosecutors’ investigations. It has engaged an external auditor to check all the contracts signed from 2006 onwards.

Peter Pilz, an opposition Green lawmaker who has been pursuing the Eurofighter side deals for years, said he estimated 80-90 percent of them were corrupt.

He told Reuters many of the trails he had followed from an umbrella group set up to organise the counter-deals led to postal box addresses not related to any real company.”

Oh dear. 🙁 If Peter Pilz is right, Eurofighter have a big problem. It mentions in the aviationweek article that there is 400+ million euros still to be paid by the Austrian government. I guess Eurofighter would have to wave goodbye to some of that/all of that if the allegations prove to be true.

I wonder if this would be happening if SAAB had managed to sell Gripen to Austria.