Federal prosecutors meet with Boeing, crash victims' relatives ahead of looming charging decision: report
Federal prosecutors are meeting with planemaker Boeing and the relatives of victims killed in two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 ahead of a July 7 deadline for the Justice Department to decide whether the company will face criminal charges, according to a report by Reuters.
In its report, Reuters cited two people familiar with the matter as well as correspondence the outlet said it reviewed. According to one of Reuter's sources, Justice Department (DOJ) officials met with Boeing lawyers on Thursday about the government finding that the company violated a 2021 agreement with the agency.
The deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) had protected Boeing from facing criminal charges over the two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
Boeing's lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis presented their case to DOJ officials from the deputy attorney general's office that a prosecution would be unwarranted and that there's no need to tear up the 2021 deal, according to the report. Such appeals are common for companies negotiating to resolve a government investigation.
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Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company has said previously that it "honored the terms" of the settlement and formally told prosecutors it disagrees with the finding that it violated the agreement.
Federal prosecutors are also scheduled to meet separately with victims' family members on Sunday to give them an update on the progress of their investigation, according to the outlet's second source. An email that was sent by the Justice Department and reviewed by Reuters indicated that officials are working on a "tight timeline."
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Senior DOJ officials have received a recommendation from prosecutors that criminal charges should be brought against Boeing after finding the planemaker violated the 2021 settlement, Reuters previously reported.
The two sides are in discussions about a potential resolution to the DOJ investigation and there is no guarantee that officials will press ahead with charging Boeing, they said last week.
The discussions come after the Jan. 5 mid-flight blowout of a plug door panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 that caused an Alaska Airlines flight to suffer a cabin depressurization after takeoff and return to Oregon's Portland International Airport for an emergency landing.
That incident occurred two days before Boeing's deferred prosecution agreement expired and exposed ongoing safety and quality issues at the aerospace giant.
Boeing had been poised to escape prosecution over a criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over the fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. The crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 in Indonesia and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019 in Ethiopia both involved Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft and prompted the FAA to ground the aircraft until November 2020.
Prosecutors had agreed to drop a criminal charge so long as Boeing overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports over a three-year period, as well as paying $2.5 billion to settle the investigation.
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Officials determined in May that Boeing breached the agreement, thereby exposing it to prosecution. The DOJ said in a court filing in Texas that Boeing had failed to "design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations."
Reuters contributed to this report.