Airbus SE (EADSY.PK) shares slumped following a French report that the U.S. Department of Justice has officially started an investigation into the European planemaker in parallel with British and French bribery probes.

The stock dropped as much 9.6 per cent, the most intraday in two-and-a-half years, after Le Monde reported Thursday that Airbus was informed at the end of the summer about the move by U.S. authorities. The newspaper also said, without revealing where it got the information, that the company could face total fines of several billion dollars from the probes.

“Airbus is cooperating with the U.S. authorities in close coordination” with investigators in the U.K. and France, the company said in a statement, adding that it has previously disclosed its “engagement” with the U.S. to provide information related to the European probes.

The DOJ couldn’t be reached before office hours on Thursday.

Airbus said in February that U.S. agencies had asked it for information to assess whether any of the misconduct alleged in the European probes could fall within U.S. jurisdiction.

The Toulouse, France-based industrial giant has been dogged by a series of investigations concerning the use of middlemen in securing plane sales, with Chief Executive Officer Tom Enders announcing that he wouldn’t seek another term amid the continuing uncertainty.

The U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office and France’s Parquet National Financier have been probing possible bribery in Airbus’s passenger jet business, while Airbus agreed to pay 81 million euros to settle a German bribery investigation into fighter-jet sales dating to 2002.