Boeing May Face Criminal Prosecution Over 737 Max Crashes, US Says (bbc.com) 62
The Department of Justice says it is considering whether to prosecute Boeing over two deadly crashes involving its 737 Max aircraft. From a report: The aviation giant breached the terms of an agreement made in 2021 that shielded the firm from criminal charges linked to the incidents, the DOJ said. Boeing has denied that it violated the agreement. The crashes - one in Indonesia in 2018, and another in Ethiopia in 2019 - killed a total of 346 people.
The plane maker failed to "design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the US fraud laws throughout its operations," the DOJ said. Boeing said it was looking forward to the opportunity to respond to the Justice Department and "believes it honoured the terms of that agreement." Under the deal, Boeing paid a $2.5bn settlement, while prosecutors agreed to ask the court to drop a criminal charge after a period of three years. The DOJ said Boeing has until 13 June to respond to the allegations and that what it said would be taken into consideration as it decides what to do next.
The plane maker failed to "design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the US fraud laws throughout its operations," the DOJ said. Boeing said it was looking forward to the opportunity to respond to the Justice Department and "believes it honoured the terms of that agreement." Under the deal, Boeing paid a $2.5bn settlement, while prosecutors agreed to ask the court to drop a criminal charge after a period of three years. The DOJ said Boeing has until 13 June to respond to the allegations and that what it said would be taken into consideration as it decides what to do next.
Any jail time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless someone goes to jail criminal charges mean nothing.
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If corporations are “persons” they need to feel criminal penalties like real people. Wage theft should be treated just as seriously as an individual committing any other theft, except scaled up proportionally to the number of victims.
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Re:Any jail time? (Score:4)
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If corporations are “persons” they need to feel criminal penalties like real people.
Managers, investors and staff can go to jail if they are found to be involved in a crime committed by a legal entity (a corporation being one type.)
Re:Any jail time? (Score:4, Informative)
Unless someone goes to jail criminal charges mean nothing.
Until more people realize this is nothing but a distraction, more whistleblowers will end up dead.
You know, the kinds of whistleblowers that would help secure criminal convictions.
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It does seem a pretty strong claim based only on suspicious correlation. OTOH, the suspicious correlation exists. And there are a lot of different entities that could lose if Boeing were successfully prosecuted.
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The problem really is that it's high risk - those who can lose will have diverse assets which will cushion the loss whereas if they get caught, they'll lose everything. And the benefits are somewhat limited. We already know what Boeing did.
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more whistleblowers will end up dead.
boeing are hiring hitmen? extraordinary claims my friend...
Speaking of extraordinary, let me know what the Vegas odds are on two ex-Boeing engineers dying within two months. After legal testimony. About safety concerns. With aircraft that have killed hundreds.
I’d say those odds land somewhere in between stop-denying-the-obvious and no-shit-Sherlock.
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what are the odds boeing hired hitmen under all the scrutiny theyre currently under and havent left a single clue? even more unlikely
What is the documented prosecuted legal criminal record, for the kind of wetwork Boeing can afford?
Wow. It's almost as if it's so unheard of, that I can rest my fucking case.
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Re:Any jail time? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Prosecuting a company makes no sense (Score:1)
A "company" is an abstraction. It doesn't make decisions. It can't go to jail.
At some point, there was a person who actually made these decisions. A person who may not even work for Boeing or own any stock in the company any more. Prosecute them!
Re:Prosecuting a company makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel a better punishment would be Boeing having to forfeit 51% ownership to the federal government. Now they can't be concerned over only the bottom line and get back to doing great engineering work. Their corporate practices are a public safety hazard.
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You think politicians would do any better? Are you mad??
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25% of Airbus is owned by three countries.
Government of France (10.86%)
Government of Germany (10.84%)
Government of Spain (4.090%)
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Never had parts that fall off due to missing fasteners along with missing documentation. Never had internal employee emails stating how they wouldn't let their families fly on the 737 MAX. https://www.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com]
Re: Prosecuting a company makes no sense (Score:2)
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This would work better as a counter if not for the fact that every single privately owned aircraft manufacturer has had the same problems, many in even higher amounts (we are talking about Boeing's failures for like two decades now).
All you are telling us is Airbus is at it's very worst simply equal to Boeing. That makes the case for Airbus style state control, not against it.
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This would work better as a counter if not for the fact that every single privately owned aircraft manufacturer has had the same problems, many in even higher amounts (we are talking about Boeing's failures for like two decades now).
All you are telling us is Airbus is at it's very worst simply equal to Boeing. That makes the case for Airbus style state control, not against it.
Also, Airbus is a privately owned company. It's not "state owned" in any stretch of the word. Several governments hold shares in a private company, giving them no more power than any other shareholder. In fact less power as most of the governments hold shares in sovereign wealth funds, meaning the government has a policy of non interference (I.E. they just want to collect the dividends and won't do anything to jeopardise that).
Europe tends to go the other way, Airbus is private but as a monopoly the gove
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Those countries would be very surprised to learn that they are socialist. Plz update yourself.
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Those countries would be very surprised to learn that they are socialist. Plz update yourself.
Indeed, most of those countries are centre-right. Germany has for most of the 21st century been under the right wing Merkel, even though the CDU is out of power they're still incredibly powerful and will likely be back in power by the end of the decade. Spain, the last hold out of Fascism and largely voted for the right since Franco's death. France has had flings with leftist governments in the past but has also has it's love of the right (Sarkozy and their current leader, Macron the banker and no, that's n
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I feel a better punishment would be Boeing having to forfeit 51% ownership to the federal government.
WTF? Absolutely NOT. The government should NOT own the means of production; otherwise, it would be labelled, legitimately, Socialist and moving into Communist.
Boeing needs complete and total destruction with executives going to prison. That will leave space for better managed companies that are not rotten to the core to step up and take on the responsibilities needed... or is this all entirely about cash flows still?
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Actually, it effectively could be. You could suspend it's right to act as a limited liability corporation for some period of time. But that would often be equivalent to a death sentence.
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It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!
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Good (Score:2)
The original deal was an utter disgrace. Fortunately, Boeing was incapable of adhering to ist conditions.
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That actually is not always true. In fact if it does come true in many cases that means the company had an overly advantaged position in the market.
If I sell widgets for $5 in a competitive market where my competitors widgets are all around $5 as well and I get hit with a huge fine do I now charge $7 for my widgets to soak the cost while my competitors are still selling theirs for $5? No, i probably have to eat most it to stay in the market .
If a company can simply raise it's prices without concern when th
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Yeah absolutely since the bigger the company the likelihood of it having strong competition is less.
And this isn't always true either, additional expenses absolutely do get passed on but direct pricing isn't always the method (but it is sometimes). Maybe 300 people get sacked instead of raising prices or they have go back to investors or they sell stock or they have to put off a planned expansion. There's more constraints to pricing than just expenses even for the big guys.
There's just more that go into
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The only people that will go to jail (Score:5, Insightful)
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Should include FAA decision makers (Score:3)
The government has blood on its hands too
Re:Should include FAA decision makers (Score:5, Informative)
Things like that happen when you intentionally hamstring regulatory agencies for the benefit of corporate masters. https://nffe.org/nffe_news/tru... [nffe.org]
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Federal employees are not immune from the purview of the DOJ so if someone is found criminally negligent they can also (and have) been brought on charges as well.
That said part of criminal law is proving intent and the evidence would have to show people at the FAA were intentionally lapsing from their duties. Not having resources, being understaffed, restricted by what the precedents say you can do to a company, these are not criminal, those are admin reforms.
A criminal case against Boeing is going to rely
Re: Should include FAA decision makers (Score:1)
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That covers a whole different crime as I imagine signing false documents probably could qualify as criminal regardless of intent, depends what the charges are.
I absolutely think and hope that the charges here from the DOJ if they bring them will include conspiracy, there's just no way this was a couple people pulling the strings behind the well meaning majority of execs for as much as they'll probably try to paint it as that.
The DOJ has like a 93% conviction rate so if a US attorney brings some charges that
Funny how art and literature can tell us something (Score:3)
Arthur Miller wrote All My Sons in 1946. True, it had a basis in a very similar situation:
A news story described how in 1941–43 the Wright Aeronautical Corporation based in Ohio had conspired with army inspection officers to approve defective aircraft engines destined for military use.
The fact that it wasn't military this time, and "just simple profiteering"...
The military officers were relieved of duty and convicted of crimes. No word on what happened to the civilians.
I'm sure someone will know.
Re:Funny how art and literature can tell us someth (Score:5, Informative)
Here, I'll do the work for you if anyone is in fact interested there is a decent writeup here.
Doesn't say if there were individual criminal charges but the company was investigated and were out of the airplane business by 1948.
The Scandal that Led to Harry S. Truman Becoming President And Marilyn Monroe Getting Married [historynet.com]
Chaos took over the company’s front office as the focus shifted to profit-taking at the expense of R&D. As the excellent book Curtiss-Wright: Greatness and Decline puts it, “A vigorous and well-planned course of action was desperately needed. This, in turn, required a high degree of managerial skill and perhaps a bit of luck. Curtiss-Wright, it seemed, lacked both.” The leadership that took over Curtiss-Wright “came from the world of corporate finance and investment banking,” the book notes, “and had almost no direct connection with, or understanding of, the aviation industry.” By the mid-1950s, Curtiss-Wright “no longer had a distinct identity. The company had no viable product to develop and sell, and overdiversification was dissipating its resources.”
A once respected company ruined by profit taking and corporate stooges. Tale as old as time.
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Sounds like Boeing today... Actually a LOT of companies. Can you say Solarwinds or Ivanti/Pulse secure?
No doubt of course they honoured the agreement (Score:2)
dem DOJ shaking corp for donation (Score:2)
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It's the Democratic Party. Do you like it when we call your buddies Rethuglicans, or claim (with some good cause) GOP stands for Grifters, Oglers and Perverts?
And why would Boeing donate to the Democratic Party? Republicans control Congress, and that's who controls the purse strings.
May be dumb question but... (Score:2)
Will Boeing go to jail if found guilty?
Government Is Showing Guts (Score:2)
Just one C*O to jail would do it (Score:1)
If just one of the elite has to pay a real price, not money, they will always have money, then things can change.
If not they will only look to the stock value and next quarter revenue.
An airplane manufacturer should not be allowed to work this way.