The offices of Lufthansa Cargo in Frankfurt were raided on Tuesday 18 February by investigators from the Frankfurt Prosecution Office and an employee of the airline has been charged with bribery.

As part of an ongoing bribery investigation by local authorities, the Lufthansa Cargo office was raided along with the offices of five other unnamed organisations. The other offices that were raided were at Frankfurt Rhein-Main Airport and at other undisclosed locations elsewhere in Germany. According to the Frankfurt Prosecution Office, the investigators looked for emails and papers that could indicate any wrong doing on the part of a particular individual.Lufthansa Cargo has confirmed that local authorities searched "diverse company offices" at the Frankfurt base and that an employee of the group, whom acts in a managerial capacity at the airline, is under "suspicion" of committing a criminal office. The Frankfurt Prosecution Office tells Air Cargo Week an individual at Lufthansa has been "charged" with bribery.The airline states in an email to ACW: "Following criminal investigations, among others, against a manager at Lufthansa Cargo AG,  internal steps are being taken to expedite clarification of the case. Lufthansa Cargo is working in close cooperation with the authorities and given them full support. No further details can be disclosed yet in view of the ongoing investigations."Lufthansa adds that the investigation may find that Lufthansa Cargo is among, "the injured parties".  Like other carriers, in the last few years Lufthansa has had to face legal action over claims it is a member of a price fixing cartel. Lufthansa avoided a fine under a Swiss price fixing cartel case, while the other airlines involved had to pay fines from $28,000 to $4.3 million, which was paid by Air France-KLM. Lufthansa avoided a much larger $17 milion fine by what the authorities, the Swiss Competition Commission, referred to as "self-denunciation".The total fines paid under that Swiss investigation was $12 million. Lufthansa has also been named in litigation brought forward by an Israeli consumers group. That group has started a class action against a range of airlines for alleged damages to consumers, which the group claims were not taken into consideration when the Israeli government sued the airlines for alleged breaches of its laws.