Federal prosecutors meet with Boeing and relatives of crash victims before making charging decision: report

Federal prosecutors meet with Boeing aircraft designer and relatives of victims who died in two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, ahead of a July 7 Justice Department deadline on whether the company will face criminal charges, according to a Reuters report.

In its report, Reuters cited two people familiar with the matter and correspondence that the portal reviewed. According to one of Reuters’ sources, Department of Justice (DOJ) officials met with Boeing lawyers on Thursday over the government’s findings that the company violated a 2021 agreement with the agency.

A deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) protected Boeing from criminal charges in connection with two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.

The report said Boeing lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis presented their case to Justice Department officials in the office of the deputy attorney general, arguing that prosecution would be unwarranted and that there was no need to sever the 2021 agreement. Such appeals are common for companies negotiating a resolution to a government investigation.

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Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company had previously said it had “honored the terms” of the settlement and formally informed prosecutors that it disagreed with the finding that breached the contract.

Heart	Security	Last	Change	Change %
B.A	BOEING CO.	182.00	-0.58	-0.32%

Federal prosecutors are also scheduled to meet separately with family members of the victims on Sunday to update them on the investigation, according to a second source. An email from the Justice Department reviewed by Reuters indicated officials are working on a “tight schedule.”

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Senior Justice Department officials received a recommendation from prosecutors that criminal charges should be brought against Boeing after the planemaker was found to have violated the 2021 settlement, Reuters previously reported.

The two sides are discussing a potential resolution of the Justice Department investigation, and there is no guarantee that officials will continue to prosecute Boeing, as they said last week.

The discussions began after a mid-flight explosion of a boarding door panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 on Jan. 5, which caused the Alaska Airlines plane to lose cabin pressure after takeoff and returned to Portland International Airport in Oregon for an emergency landing.

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The incident came two days before a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing was set to expire and exposed ongoing safety and quality problems at the aerospace giant.

Boeing came close to avoiding indictment on charges of conspiring to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in connection with deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019. The October 2018 crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia and the March 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 both involved Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft and prompted the FAA to ground the plane until November 2020.

Prosecutors agreed to drop criminal charges on the condition that Boeing reform its compliance practices and file regular reports over a three-year period and pay $2.5 billion to end the investigation.

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Officials determined in May that Boeing had breached the agreement, exposing it to prosecution. The Justice Department said in a Texas lawsuit that Boeing failed to “design, implement and enforce Compliance and Ethics Program to prevent and detect violations of U.S. fraud laws in all of our operations.”

Reuters contributed to this report.