U.S. prosecutors’ exclusive meeting with Boeing and crash victims as criminal charging decision looms, sources tell Reuters

Authors: Mike Spector and Chris Prentice

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors are meeting with Boeing Co and relatives of fatal crash victims as a July 7 deadline for the Justice Department to decide whether to bring criminal charges against the plane maker, according to two people familiar with the matter and correspondence reviewed by Reuters.

One of the sources said Justice Department officials met with Boeing lawyers on Thursday to discuss the government’s finding that the company violated an agreement with the department for 2021. That agreement, known as a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), shielded it from criminal prosecution over two 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.

According to the second person, federal prosecutors are scheduled to meet with family members of the victims on Sunday to update them on the progress of the investigation. U.S. officials are working on a “tight schedule,” according to an email sent by the Justice Department and reviewed by Reuters.

Boeing lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis presented their argument to officials in the deputy attorney general’s office on Thursday that filing criminal charges would be unwarranted and there is no need to terminate the 2021 contract, one of the people said.

Such appeals from companies targeted by the Justice Department are typical during negotiations to end a government investigation.

Officials want to get input from family members as they consider how to proceed, the email said. Prosecutors from the Justice Department’s Criminal Fraud Unit and the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas will participate in Sunday’s meeting, it said.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and Boeing declined to comment.

Boeing previously said it “respected the terms” of the settlement and formally informed prosecutors that it disagreed with the finding that it violated the agreement.

U.S. prosecutors have recommended that senior Justice Department officials bring criminal charges against Boeing after concluding that the plane maker violated a 2021 settlement, two people familiar with the matter previously told Reuters.

Both sides are in discussions about potentially resolving the Justice Department investigation, and there is no guarantee officials will bring charges, they said last week.

The deliberations follow the explosion of a panel on a Boeing plane in flight on Jan. 5, just two days before the company’s DPA expired. The incident exposed ongoing safety and quality problems at Boeing.

Boeing was poised to avoid prosecution on a criminal charge of conspiring to defraud the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019.

Prosecutors agreed to drop criminal charges if Boeing reformed its compliance practices and filed regular reports for three years. Boeing also agreed to pay $2.5 billion to end the investigation.

In May, officials determined that the company had breached the contract, exposing Boeing to prosecution. The Justice Department said in Texas court filings that the planemaker failed to “design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.”