Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge stemming from two deadly crashes of 737 Max jetliners after the government determined the company violated an agreement that had protected it from prosecution for more than three years, the Justice Department said Sunday night.
Federal prosecutors gave Boeing the choice this week of entering a guilty plea and paying a fine as part of its sentence or facing a trial on the felony criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Prosecutors accused the American aerospace giant of deceiving regulators who approved the airplane and pilot-training requirements for it.
The plea deal, which still must receive the approval of a federal judge to take effect, calls for Boeing to pay an additional $243.6 million fine. That was the same amount it paid under the 2021 settlement that the Justice Department said the company breached. An independent monitor would be named to oversee Boeing’s safety and quality procedures for three years.
The plea deal covers only wrongdoing by Boeing before the crashes, which killed all 346 passengers and crew members aboard two new Max jets. It does not give Boeing immunity for other incidents, including a panel that blew off a Max jetliner during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, a Justice Department official said.
They did it once, then did it again and not only is it still just a fine, the fine didn’t even go up. Given inflation since then, the fine actually went down in real terms.
That’ll teach them for sure! /s
Boeing made $76B in revenue in 2023. This is slightly more than 1 day’s revenue for them ($210M / day) or a bit more than 10 days profit for them ($21M / day). They will keep doing what they’re doing, but increase their spending on a PR campaign to improve their public image.
They will keep doing what they’re doing
Wrong.
This plea deal helps them quantify the cost of safety lapses, which they didn’t have before. Now they know that they’ll only get fined a tiny bit, they know that it’ll be worth it to cut further corners if that helps them sell maybe 5-10 more planes in total.
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“In a major win for the DOJ Boeing has agreed to a plea deal to avoid a criminal trial. As part of the deal Boeing agreed to a slap on the wrist after which they will be legally required to admit to being very naughty before they can resume committing crimes.”
If you were I were to commit criminal fraud, we would go to prison. Why is it that a corporation, which is also considered to be a person, does not need to do something as life-altering?
It’s insane. Of course we can’t just jail a corporation and just shutting them down forcibly would cause more problems than it solves, but really that fine needs to be at least 50 times as high. Probably 100 times. Something that hurts, a lot. Not enough to outright bankrupt them, but enough to do that if it happens again any time soon. Their yearly revenue is 72 billion. This is the equivalent of someone making 50k a year paying a $200 fine for gross negligience that killed people. What the fuck?
Jail the executives and/or apply the fine to them. They are ultimately the ones that pushed this culture to happen, and as they say “the buck stops here”.
Wishful thinking, I know. It would never happen in real life.
It may never happen but don’t give up on the fact that it could happen. We make up what is the collective consciousness of all civilization. Just as we thought pot would never be legal there was enough people who said it should be. One day you might wake up and the work we did in shaming the owner class, the robber barons, will be a reality.
I don’t think a fine is an appropriate result. Any amount of money paid to the government is not going to get those people back, it’s not going to fix Boeing’s workplace culture, it’s just going to drive them to cut more corners to recoup the cost of the fine.
Clearly, they can’t be trusted to run their own QC operation in an industry where a few missed bolts leads to the violent deaths of hundreds of people. The “punishment” should be the creation of a QC and safety team that is accountable to the American people, which is paid for directly by Boeing. This team is financially liable for Boeing’s mistakes, and picks a fee based on how well boeing is passing QCs and inspections. Most importantly, Boeing’s C-suite is not allowed to privately communicate with this team.
Accountability should be the “punishment.”
I might be mistaken but I thought they are now under a lot of scrutiny from the FAA
Fine the shareholders personally, the major ones. I leave it to the lawyers to figure out how to go about that.
I suggest a federal agency become lone shareholder and criminal charges be filed against board members
So a bribe so nobody goes to jail…
A bribe with someone else’s money.
I liked it better when large corps could go dark practically overnight, e.g. Enron. Andersen, et al.
My god is the DOJ going to pay the bar tab for Boeing’s team too?
They killed hundreds of people by lying and then got caught lying some more. Over and over we’re told that if there was ever any actual criminality it would pierce the corporate veil. So either that was bullshit or the DOJ is incompetent or unwilling to go after these murderers the same way they do other organized crime.
It’s time to make the existence of Corporations a campaign issue. If they aren’t doing anything wrong then they don’t need the shield right?
What a sick joke our DOJ is.
And the mysterious deaths of the whistleblowers? Did they get to plead that away too?
This is an absolute god damn failure. Merrick Garland is a spineless, neutered, impotent, milquetoast, coward and that’s exactly how history should remember him.
Well that’s fine. It’s not as if anyone died.
Oh wait…
Pleading to avoid criminal charges regarding cases where people died should not be a thing…
Corporations are not people when it’s convenient
“Sometimes doing what’s right isn’t as important as doing what’s profitable”
Damn, I wish I could commit felony fraud and get off with just a fine.
Although, doesn’t the government usually prefer to not work with convicted felons? Does this mean they’ll prefer other companies for contracts, etc.?
We’d need to actually have an aviation market instead of (checks notes) two corporations.
And pay a fine of 1 day’s salary.
The system is broken
Are we filing charges against sock puppets named Boeing? Who is the man in charge? Over three hundred people are dead. Those families deserve justice, not whatever this is.
In the US the corporation acts as a legal shield, except in criminal cases. The fact that the DOJ hasn’t ripped that shield away and stuck a probe up their ass tells you everything you need to know about how true my first sentence is. Despite hearing it ad nauseum every time something like the Ohio train crash happens.
No more too big to fail companies
