Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace multinational, is to pay a record £3bn in penalties after admitting it had paid huge bribes on an “endemic” basis to land contracts in 20 countries, The Guardian reported.

Anticorruption investigators hailed the result as the largest ever corporate fine for bribery in the world.

Allison Clare, for the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), told the court the company had paid bribes in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Taiwan and Ghana between 2011 and 2015.

Airbus, which admitted five counts of failing to prevent bribery, had used a network of secret agents to pay large-scale backhanders to officials in foreign countries to land high-value contracts.

This was run by a unit at its French headquarters, which its one-time chief executive Tom Enders reportedly called “bullshit castle”.

French prosecutors examined bribes to other countries including China, Japan, Russia, Kuwait, Brazil and Turkey.

Airbus hopes the settlements, approved by courts in the three countries, will end turbulence within its management which had led to scores of senior executives being sacked. The firm is one of the largest employers in the UK, with a workforce of 13,500.