British Airways, part of International Airlines Group, is refusing to pay a £121.5m fine from the Office of Fair Trading in 2007 for allegedly fixing the price of fuel surcharges. The UK airline says the OFT has repeated failed to bring a criminal prosecution against four current and former BA executives after the OFT’s case fell apart days into the trial last year after the 70,000 new emails came to light that had not been submitted to the defence.
As reported by the Telegraph newspaper, Willie Walsh, the IAG chief executive, said he had no intention of paying the fine unless the OFT provided fresh evidence proving the airline’s wrongdoing. "The OFT fine is still outstanding. We haven’t agreed any payment with them," he said. "We said we needed disclosure of the evidence before we could agree anything with them. But, given the way the criminal trial collapsed, we don’t believe there are any grounds for that level of fine.