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U.S. says Boeing broke terms of settlement over 737 Max crashes [1]

['Ian Duncan']

Date: 2024-05-14  

Boeing breached the terms of a settlement with the federal government to resolve a charge linked to the deadly crashes of two 737 Max aircraft, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday, opening the company up to potential criminal prosecution. Prosecutors charged the company in 2021 with defrauding federal safety officials by not fully disclosing a new feature on the planes that was implicated in the crashes. The Justice Department allowed Boeing to pay $2.5 billion in penalties and undergo monitoring until this summer, after which the charge could be dropped.

But in a letter to the judge overseeing the case, the Justice Department said the airplane manufacturer had not lived up to the terms of the deal because it did not “design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.”

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The Justice Department said in the filing that it was still determining what to do next and gave Boeing until June 13 to deliver a response.

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In a statement Tuesday, Boeing denied that it had breached the terms of the deal.

“We believe that we have honored the terms of that agreement, and look forward to the opportunity to respond to the Department on this issue,” the company said.

The decision comes as Boeing is still reeling from another grave safety breach involving the 737 Max, after a door panel blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight in January. No one was seriously hurt in that instance, but it exposed problems with the company’s quality control and sparked a fresh criminal inquiry by the Justice Department as well as reviews by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.

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The earlier crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people, and many of the victims’ families have been fighting for the criminal case to be reopened. Paul G. Cassell, a professor of law at the University of Utah College of Law who is representing them, said the disclosure by the Justice Department was an important first step. The families are scheduled to meet with prosecutors at the end of the month.

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[1] Url: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/14/boeing-justice-department-settlement-breach/

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