Interesting article, and I have no information on how accurate it is, but one thing struck me as slightly odd. The suspicion around the Sabena Airbus deal was that they ordered up to 34 aircraft that they allegedly didn't need - surely they had a similar number of Boeing 737s (200/300/400/500s) at the time which were getting long in the tooth (certainly the 200s) so replacing them doesn't seem so odd.