Reports: Criminal Charges Against Boeing Recommended To DOJ After Deadly Crashes
Prosecutors are reportedly recommending criminal charges against Boeing to the Department of Justice over allegations that the plane manufacturer violated a settlement related to two fatal crashes involving its 737 Max aircraft.
Senior DOJ officials are reviewing the recommendations and have until July 7 to make a final decision about whether to prosecute the company, Reuters and CNN reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
A Boeing spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The company has previously denied that it breached the 2021 agreement, which had a three-year term.
The DOJ’s “deferred prosecution agreement” protected Boeing from criminal prosecution over both crashes, which killed a combined 346 people, in exchange for the company meeting a number of conditions. These included the company paying more than $2.5 billion in penalties and compensation, a portion of which went to the crash victims’ families.
In a May court filing, the DOJ also said Boeing failed a requirement to “design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.”
Since the settlement was reached, the company has faced renewed scrutiny of its 737 Max planes after a door panel blew off one of them midflight over Oregon in January. Multiple whistleblowers have since come forward accusing the company of concealing unsafe building practices at its plants.
Families of those killed in both crashes asked the DOJ last week not only to prosecute the company but to levy a $24.8 billion fine, the maximum amount that can be brought in a criminal trial.
“The families continue to believe the appropriate action now is an aggressive criminal prosecution of The Boeing Company,” they said in a letter sent by their attorney, Paul Cassell, and obtained by HuffPost.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
