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US wants Boeing to plead guilty to fraud over fatal crashes, lawyers say

The U.S. Justice Department is pushing Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud in connection with two deadly plane crashes involving its 737 Max jetliners, according to several people who heard federal prosecutors detail a proposed offer Sunday.

Boeing will have until the end of the coming week to accept or reject the offer, which includes the giant aerospace company agreeing to an independent monitor who would oversee its compliance with anti-fraud laws, they said.

The case stems from the department’s determination that Boeing violated an agreement that was intended to resolve a 2021 charge of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. Prosecutors alleged at the time that Boeing misled regulators who approved the 737 Max and set pilot-training requirements to fly the plane. The company blamed two relatively low-level employees for the fraud.

The Justice Department told relatives of some of the 346 people who died in the 2018 and 2019 crashes about the plea offer during a video meeting. The family members, who want Boeing to face a criminal trial and to pay a $24.8 billion fine, reacted angrily. One said prosecutors were gaslighting the families; another shouted at them for several minutes when given a chance to speak.

555_1 ,

Boeing killed John Barnett

Etterra ,

I’ll say it again: fees should be increased exponentially based on total income (not profit) - the more you make, the more crippling the penalties.

Not that it could everv happen. There’s not enough money in the world to fight off the corporate lobbying that would fight back if such a law was seriously considered in the first place.

MacGuffin94 ,

Make the mandatory minimum fine 105% of the estimated revenue.

barsquid ,

The board should be jailed for fatal crashes. They decided on money over those people’s lives. What is homicide for an individual is somehow feds requesting consent to be fined from a company.

superminerJG ,

Proportional to income is more than enough. If you took away 50% of a rich guy’s net income; that would be a huge blow to his finances.

PaupersSerenade ,
@PaupersSerenade@sh.itjust.works avatar

Fun fact! PG&E plead to 84 counts of manslaughter due to them wiping an entire city of the map and nothing really changed. I’m all for Boeing (and other companies) having oversight, but it just doesn’t seem like it does much.

catloaf ,

And then Boeing will go to prison, right? Like they’re not allowed to do any business for some number of years?

No, we don’t do that? Then either we should start, or we can start targeting the people who actually make and are responsible for these decisions, and make them personally liable. The whole “corporate veil” thing is a legal fiction of convenience.

PythagreousTitties ,

Seriously. If companies are people they need to be imprisoned, ie not able to do any business at all, for whatever length of time actual people get sent to prison for.

I’m more than happy to start with the CEOs as a first step.

NateNate60 ,

“Imprisoning” a company is kind of a nonsensical concept because it is a concept that is made up and exists only in the minds of people. But one “creative” punishment is potentially to punish the company by confiscating its equity.

So instead of N years imprisonment, the state confiscates N × 5 per cent of the company’s equity. That means that all outstanding shares represent 100 minus N×5 per cent of the company instead of 100 per cent.

Example: Company A has 1 million outstanding shares. Each share of common stock therefore represents 0.01% of the company. Suppose the company is convicted of a crime that would be punishable by 3 years imprisonment. So 15% of its equity is confiscated. That now means 1 million shares represent 85% of the company, so each share of common stock now only represents 0.0085% of the company. The state gets one special share that represents the 15% equity that was confiscated. The state gets 15% of all profit dividends going forward.

This would heavily encourage companies to avoid criminal activity and it is multitudes more effective as a deterrent than mere fines, because it directly hurts a company’s share price, i.e. the one thing that its investors actually care about.

beebarfbadger ,

The problem here is that it would reward the government for either a) punishing criminals but also b) framing innocents with the goal of taking their money. We’re seeing how well that works with the private prison industrial complex. In essence, it just creates an industry of creating criminals where there were none.

Punishing criminals severely is great. Making it a business will end up with the worst kind of people optimising the revenue from it.

Johnmannesca ,
@Johnmannesca@lemmy.world avatar

Right. We’ll see the same cronies from Boeing looking for a Gov position so they can get away with legal theft next

beebarfbadger ,

Ooooh no. A government position would imply at least a shred of accountability. They’d lobby for privatisation. Failing that, they’d bribe the officials in charge to run the whole system into the ground so that they can argue a private entrepreneur could run it more efficiently, and then they’d do it with as little oversight as they can buy from their legislators.

PythagreousTitties ,

You took what I said way too literally. And then expanded on my point.

frazw ,

Except then the ordinary workers who did nothing wrong are made to suffer. Either they don’t get paid or they lose their jobs. IMHO you make the CEO personally liable. They have the power to change the company attitude and policy. They need to have their personal fortune hit as well as jail time.

frezik ,

Jail the current executives and hand over the company to the workers. This works best if there’s a robust union in the company already. Boeing sorta kinda does, but it’s been hurt by decades of union busting efforts.

catloaf ,

Which is kind of my point: we shouldn’t be imprisoning people who aren’t an immediate danger to society either.

PythagreousTitties ,

Yea. That’s what I said.

j4k3 ,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

Go kill 346 people in a careless and culpable way. See if you stay off of death row.

The only way to stop a problem like this is from the top down. If the issue is traced to some low level employees, great, put everyone from the board members all the way down to these low level employees on trial as a whole. This kind of thing is a culture from the top down.

Boeing should be dismantled or nationalized and completely restructured with none of its present management.

henfredemars ,

People who amass this kind of disgusting wealth are not beholden to human laws. Like a black hole, the weight of their greed rips right through the social fabric.

BruceTwarzen ,

Oh nooo they won’t get off that easy. They’ll have to pay a hefty fee of dozens of thousands of dollars

FooBarrington ,

Management has to be held personally responsible. That’s why they make so much money, right?

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Corporations are people until they commit a crime. At which point you cannot possibly treat them like people.

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