Boeing To Pay $200 Million To Settle SEC's Probe Over 737 Max (bloomberg.com) 48
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Boeing agreed to pay $200 million to settle US Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that the company and its former Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg failed to properly disclose safety issues with its 737 Max jetliner. The settlement, which was announced by the SEC on Thursday, follows a probe by the regulator's enforcement division. Investigators examined whether Boeing was adequately forthcoming to shareholders about material problems with its jetliner that crashed in 2018 and 2019.
Without admitting or denying the SEC's findings, Boeing and Muilenburg consented to cease-and-desist orders that include penalties of $200 million and $1 million, respectively. The twin tragedies killed 346 people and prompted one of the longest groundings in aviation history. The SEC enforcement action is one of the last remaining government investigations. Boeing had cautioned in its most recently quarterly filing that the "outcome of which may be material." Boeing paid a $243.3 million fine as part of a $2.5 billion settlement with the US Justice Department to end a criminal investigation in January 2021.
Without admitting or denying the SEC's findings, Boeing and Muilenburg consented to cease-and-desist orders that include penalties of $200 million and $1 million, respectively. The twin tragedies killed 346 people and prompted one of the longest groundings in aviation history. The SEC enforcement action is one of the last remaining government investigations. Boeing had cautioned in its most recently quarterly filing that the "outcome of which may be material." Boeing paid a $243.3 million fine as part of a $2.5 billion settlement with the US Justice Department to end a criminal investigation in January 2021.
Why the hell was criminal investigation stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is really repulsive how these mass-murderers simply can pay their way to not go to prison.
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right! 200 million is chump change for Boeing.
Those in management responsible for 'gaming the system' to remove the redundancies to avoid extra pilot training should be facing the death penalty.
Re: Why the hell was criminal investigation stoppe (Score:1)
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The point is none of that was paid by the criminals themselves. And hence the mass-murderers go free and unpunished...
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Boeing had $62 billion in revenue last year.
Would the threat of being fined less than 5% of your gross income (the equivalent of a corporation's gross revenue) be enough to deter you from killing hundreds of people? Would you be okay with someone who makes $100k/year paying $5k to make up for killing you and a few hundred other people?
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I strongly agree on all sentiments, especially that it is very wrong that most of the corporate culprits go on basically unpunished.
I think the problem is that Boeing is "too big to fail". [wikipedia.org]
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right! 200 million is chump change for Boeing.
Imagine if those had been American lives that were lost...
America has a ruling class (Score:2, Insightful)
I'mma gonna spend a little karma now and politicize things. Trump and his documents is another great example. As Beau Of The Fifth Column over on YouTube pointed out if any of us had those documents in their possession we'd be in a cell right now.
Then there's Elon Musk, who sign a deal to buy Twitter waiving due diligence and now is claiming due diligence wasn't done.
You can find a lot of examples of billionaires raping underaged bo
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Musk: Is in the courts
Maxwell trafficked girls to Epstein: dead and Prince Andrew: Bought his way out like Boeing are doing.
"I can go on and on and on and on. Laws don't apply to our Kings and Queens."
You could continue to go on and on, but the laws, like them or not, are very much being applied to all the people you name.
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Musk: will either hold out until Twitter's stock price plummets and he buys it for cheap or settle "in the courts".
Maxwell: isn't the point. The point is to make her tell us who she trafficked the girls to and hold those people accountable. Those people are the ruling class. In some cases literal kings and in others defacto kings.
The laws are not being applied. A pageant is being put on to placate you.
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My personal opinion is that the law--sometimes--catches up to these people, but it is much gentler and slower than it is for Joe Schmoe. Somebody uptopic had it right--if a middle-class guy had been caught with all the crap Trump had in his basement, he'd be looking at cell walls within a day.
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we just like to pretend we don't. The laws don't apply to them.
Obviously. Of course, any state this corrupt does not have a bright long-term future.
Honestly I think we can still pull it together (Score:3)
They're going to demand a new new deal. Basically a reset. If we're still a democracy in 10 years they're going to get it.
This is of course why the 1% are desperate enough to allow multipl
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If we're still a democracy in 10 years they're going to get it.
Gotta be a democracy in the first place [represent.us] to still be a democracy. This country was literally designed to be an oligarchy, they put giving the vote only to landed white males right into the constitution.
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They have a lot of sycophants and fascists who think they'll come out ahead in the new regime. A few of them will for a short period of time before they're purged. For some reason they don't ever seem to remember what happens to mid-level officials in Russia who get close to stairs or drink tea
This. There is a lot of scum that does not care about the whole but only their personal gain. At the same time they too stupid to see that they do not qualify for inclusion in the New Order. Kind of reminds me of quite a few "neo-Nazis" in Germany that would immediately would have gone to a concentration camp as "antisocial" in the 3rd Reich.
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Citation required "Boeing was able to show that their documentation to the customers showed that new training was required for the new types"
https://link.springer.com/arti... [springer.com]
"MCAS was not identified in the original documentation/training for 737 MAX pilots (Glanz et al. 2019). But after the Lion Air crash, Boeing (2018) issued a Flight Crew Operations Manual Bulletin on November 6, 2018 containing procedures for responding to flight control problems due to possible erroneous AOA inputs. The next day the FAA
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They actually did worse than cover up the existence of MCAS and assure customers that no new training was required for the MAX .
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/2... [cnbc.com]
"Boeing did not tell Southwest Airlines, its largest 737 Max customer, that a standard safety feature designed to warn pilots about malfunctioning sensors had been deactivated on the jets.
The safety feature is an alert that lights up in the cockpit if a plane’s angle-of-attack sensors transmit faulty data about the pitch of the plane’s n
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Sorry, but that is total crap. The very point of the system that caused the two crashes was that no new training was required. In fact, the new system was not even mentioned in the plane documentation for the pilots. That is a primary reason these two planes crashed: The pilots did not know what was causing the misbehavior and hence did not know what they needed to switch off. Had they known the MCAS was new and in there and had they known what it does, they would have switched that off first and the two mi
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That's why there aren't any prosecutions. These organizations are designed to diffuse responsibility to the point where nobody can be held criminally accountable. At most some engineer gets convicted, because they didn't stand up to their boss' demands.
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Well, yes. But it would be easy to just insist on leadership responsibility and if something like this happens, the CEO is _always_ responsible unless there was due care, due diligence, independent oversight, etc. That is ultimately the only way to ensure a corporate culture that tries hard to reduce this crap.
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Maybe the best way is to change how the FAA works. Boeing was only able to do this because they convinced the FAA that they didn't need to recertify the aircraft and retrain the pilots.
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That is a primary reason these two planes crashed
The primary reason the planes crashed is the system failed. If it had been working fine then they wouldn't have crashed. The primary reason the planes crashed is a lack of redundancy, if proper redundancy was installed single failures wouldn't have led to system loss. The primary reason the plane crashed is a lack of documentation. The primary reason the planes crashed is a lack of training. The primary reason the plane crashed is customers were not informed of the importance of alarms when making purchasin
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Actually, my neighbor is an AA pilot who went through the initial 737 MAX transition training. I asked him about this. The only mention of MCAS was in the 'list of acronyms'.
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"Actually, my neighbor is an AA pilot"
I think I'd be a little worried if my pilot was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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It is really repulsive how these mass-murderers simply can pay their way to not go to prison.
What is even worse - the only behavior they are punishing here is lying to investors. Cutting corners, killing people, then stalling so that more people get killed, then trying to keep the fleet from being grounded at all. No punishment even attempted for any of that.
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What is even worse - the only behavior they are punishing here is lying to investors. Cutting corners, killing people, then stalling so that more people get killed, then trying to keep the fleet from being grounded at all. No punishment even attempted for any of that.
That's because none of that is within the scope of the SEC's powers. The SEC can only punish things related to the stock markets, so they've have settled one aspect - that they mislead the stock market by claiming the planes were fine when they plainly weren't. Anything else that may be underway from the FAA, criminal prosecutions, or lawsuits from the airlines or the families of passengers isn't affected by that.
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Agreed. And I was not commenting on the SEC. The SEC is doing what its mandate is. The penalty may be a bit low though given what enormous problem Boeing was hiding from the investors.
Not a fine for deaths (Score:2)
It is really repulsive how these mass-murderers simply can pay their way to not go to prison.
The SEC doesn't investigate murder. The $200M fine is to settle the probe for misleading investors.
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Sure. But maybe read the story? Hint: It does not only mention the SEC...
They should never be allowed to settle (Score:3)
By enabling the settlement path you encourage corporate CEOs to risk-accept gambling with human lives, and if they can do it - they will.
Pity pat on the Wrist (Score:4, Informative)
The average cost of a 737 is between $90 and $442 Million.
This cost them One Plane.
Hardly Harsh
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Indeed! Those who deny we are a plutocracy just received shit in their evidence fan.
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The average cost of a 737 is between $90 and $442 Million.
This cost them One Plane.
Hardly Harsh
The crashes happened in foreign places so SEC's powers are limited.
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Less than 1% of VW's fine dieselgate $25B (Score:4, Interesting)
Less than 1% of VW's fine dieselgate $25B. Congratulations must go to Boeing's teams of lawyers and lobbyists, they represent the best the USA has to offer.
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Less than 1% of VW's fine dieselgate $25B. Congratulations must go to Boeing's teams of lawyers and lobbyists, they represent the best the USA has to offer.
There's that, but also nationalism. Nobody in the US gets mad when we sue VAG but there's american Jobs [murdering people for profit] on the line if you want to hold Boeing accountable.
The price of two 737 Max jets (Score:4, Informative)
$200 million is about what it costs someone to buy two 737 Max jets.
https://simpleflying.com/how-m... [simpleflying.com].
Win Win (Score:2)
Personal accountability - unusual, unfortunately! (Score:3)
Having watched Dennis Muilenberg when he was Boeing's PM for Army FCS, I'm gratified to see this. $22b was bad enough, but all those lives lost...
But if I was a Boeing shareholder, I'd want the rest of his retirement clawed back, too.
We now know the cost of a human life (Score:4, Insightful)
According to Wikipedia, 346 people died in the two 737 MAX crashes. That puts the price-per-life at just shy of $580,000.00. It's good to have a definitive figure, I guess.
If I was the psychopathic CEO of a major corporation, I'd probably consider that a fairly small COB.
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It's good to have a definitive figure, I guess.
Literally every company if you dig through and compare risk assessment will result in a cost assigned to loss of life. The cost of life is directly comparable to actual profits made from activities. I'm actually quite surprised its so low in this case, but only by a factor of 3. Based on figures from the oil industry, process industry and mining industry, the figure is normally closer to the 1% of yearly revenue when you compare risk ranking chart which show aversion to commercial losses with those of safet
Money for goverment and no justice (Score:2)
People needed to go to prison both to pay and as a warning to others in the future. This all amounts to a bribe. Businesses will continue to cut corners when they know they shouldn't.