According to the French business daily La Tribune, board members of EADS knew about production problems with the A380 superjumbo before they exercised their stock option, reports said Tuesday.

A revised internal production plan dated March 6, 2006, foresaw the delivery of only 24 A380s in 2007, instead of the 29 originally scheduled. However, this revision was not cited in the notes of an EADS board meeting held the next day in Amsterdam, La Tribune wrote. Accordingly, EADS announced in October 2006 that only one A380 would be delivered in 2007.

On the evening of March 7, 2006, then EADS co-chief Noel Forgeard reportedly gave the authorization for EADS executives to exercise their stock options and sell their shares in the company. The newspaper said that 85 percent of the company's 800 senior managers and executives holding EADS shares, with the exception of Airbus CEO Gustav Humbert and EADS co-CEO Thomas Enders, took advantage of this opportunity.

Between March 8 and March 28, Forgeard himself earned some 2.5 million euros (now 3.36 million dollars) in profits from the sales of his shares, while his children earned another million euros.

On June 14 of last year, after news was published of the A380 production problems and resulting delivery delays, the price of EADS shares plunged more than 26 percent in a single day, to 18.73 euros.

Authorities are to question EADS co-president Arnaud Lagardere later on Tuesday. His company, the Lagardere group, and the German car-maker DaimlerChrysler both sold large numbers of EADS shares on April 4 for 2 billion euros, while after June 14 the sale would only have brought them each only 1.15 billion euros.