Hi,
In this context, "Airbus continues to support the BEA which is leading the investigation with expertise" should sound at their ears like: "Airbus is very confident that it will be fully cleared by its BEA old friends".
And so on...
Those speculations based on previous speculations will certainly be confirmed by future speculations based on the previous ones and might end, at some point, by sounding enough like some "truth" if it is repeated ad nauseam.
That's their goal.
The study of some BEA old investigations show clearly some "cover up" .. and in my POV .. this is a discredit for the BEA
Note that "cover up" is not a conspiracy ... it's just hide some informations to the public.
You must also know (or I remind you) who is the owner of the "Le Figaro" :
Dassault.
And Dassault and the constructor of the AF447 A330 have tight financial link.
You can even suppose that the leak come in fact from the BEA .. or Airbus.
They can disapprove after the release of the article (this article was pasted in all the main french newspapers) but this will still in the mind of the general public and that exactly the same behavior you describe .....
and might end, at some point, by sounding enough like some "truth" if it is repeated ad nauseam.
That's their goal.
It's a way to prepare the public to accept the fact that in their next official BEA report ... crew will be pointed as making errors.
At least it's a possible scenario I can't discard.