EADS head Gallois defends firm over trading probe

PARIS (Reuters) - EADS (EAD.PA) Chief Executive Louis Gallois defended the European aerospace group's financial transparency in a newspaper interview, after French regulators said they had found evidence of insider trading at EADS.

"I believe that the financial information given by EADS has always adhered to the rules of transparency," Gallois told Les Echos business newspaper in an interview due to be published on Thursday.

"The members of the executive committees of Airbus and EADS are not cheats," he added.

On April 1, French regulators recommended that executives at aircraft maker Airbus and its parent company EADS face insider trading penalties or charges linked to costly delays of the A380 superjumbo and said the company had misled markets.

Winding up an 18-month probe, market regulator AMF said it would hand its evidence to its own sanctions committee and to public prosecutors, who will be able to grill senior EADS officials separately over events stretching back to 2005.

Gallois also told Les Echos that he would tell French Prime Minister Francois Fillon that "EADS is not above the law" but that its managers should be presumed innocent during the investigation. Gallois is due to accompany Fillon on a trip to Japan.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, editing by Geert De Clercq)