Ethiopian federal police officers are held on the scene of the Flight Airlines Ethiopian Airlines and 302 plane accident, near the city of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia on March 11, 2019.
Tiksa Negeri | Reuters
The United States Ministry said on Friday that it had entered into an agreement with Boeing This will allow the aircraft manufacturer to avoid prosecution on two accidents of its 737 max planes which killed 346 people.
The non-culture agreement would allow Boeing, a large military entrepreneur and a high-level American exporter, to avoid being labeled a criminal. The decision means that Boeing will not be tried as planned next month, as family members of the accident victims have urged for years.
The Ministry of Justice met with family members of the accident victims last week to discuss the potential agreement.
On Friday, in a legal file, the MJ declared “is the judgment of the government that the agreement is a fair and just resolution which serves the public interest”.
The agreement “immediately guarantees the responsibility and the substantial advantages of Boeing, while avoiding the uncertainty and the risk of dispute presented by proceeding to the trial”.
The MJ said that he intended to file a request for rejection of the case once “the agreement in principle” will be finalized, no later than the end of next week.
Under the agreement, Boeing will have to “pay or invest” more than $ 1.1 billion, the DOJ said on Friday in his file before the Federal Court in Texas. This amount includes a criminal fine of $ 487.2 million, although $ 243.6 million he has already paid in a previous agreement would be credited. It also includes $ 444.5 million for a new fund for accident victims and $ 445 million more on compliance, security and quality programs.
Boeing refused to comment.
The company has been trying for years to put the two accidents of its best -selling Max aircraft – a Lion Air flight in October 2018 and a flight from Ethiopian Airlines less than five months later – behind it. The Maxes were anchored worldwide for almost two years after the second accident, a break that gave one step ahead with Airbus Rival to recover from the cocovio pandemic.
But the families of the victims of the accident criticized the previous agreements as a darling transactions for Boeing, called for more responsibility for the company and said that its leaders should be tried. In 2022, a former Boeing technical pilot was acquitted for accusations of fraud linked to the development of the max.
Several of the members of the family of victims published a declaration through their lawyer shortly after the publication of the judicial file by criticizing the agreement and saying that he created a disturbing precedent for other large companies.
“This type of unprecedented contract is unprecedented and obviously bad for the crime of the deadliest companies in American history. My families will oppose and hope to convince the court to reject it,” said families lawyer Paul Cassell.
The Ministry of Justice said that relatives of more than 110 victims of the accident told government that they will support the non-procedure agreement or “supported the ministry's efforts to resolve the case before the trial in general”, but added that others declared that the United States took Boeing in trial and that they would argue to reject the agreement.
The aerospace giant reached a regulation in 2021 in the last days of the first Trump administration which protected it from prosecution for three years.
Under this agreement, Boeing agreed to pay a fine of $ 2.51 billion to avoid prosecution. This included a criminal sanction of $ 243.6 million, a fund of $ 500 million for family members of accident victims and $ 1.77 billion for its airline customers. The new fund will be in addition to the 300 million dollars already established.
Rescuers work on the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight accident near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, March 11, 2019.
Mulugeta Ayene | Reuters
This colony in 2021 had to expire two days after a door panel exploded by a 737 max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines on January 5, 2024, after the plane left the Boeing factory without key bolts installed.
But last year, the American prosecutors said that Boeing had violated the 2021 regulation, accusing the company of not having implemented and applying a program of conformity and ethics to detect violations of American laws on fraud.
Last July, towards the end of the Biden administration, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to the accusation of criminal fraud in a new regulation. A federal judge then rejected the advocacy agreement, invoking concerns concerning the requirements of diversity, equity and inclusion for the choice of a business instructor.
Under this agreement in 2024, Boeing would have experienced a fine of up to 487.2 million dollars, although the Ministry of Justice recommended that the Tribunal attributes Boeing with half of this amount it paid under the previous agreement.
Family members hold photographs of victims of the accident lost in two deadly Boeing 737 accidents who killed 346 people while the CEO of Boeing, Dennis Muilenburg, testifies before an audience of the Senate committee, science and transport on air security and the 737 Max, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on October 29, 2019.
Sarah Silbiger | Reuters
The United States had accused Boeing of a conspiracy in order to defraud the government by deceiving regulators of its inclusion of a maximum flight control system which was later involved in the two accidents.
“Boeing employees have chosen the path of profit on the franchise by hiding the material information of the FAA concerning the functioning of its Max 737 plane and by engaging in an effort to hide their deception,” said the deputy prosecutor of the criminal division of the Ministry of Justice, at the time of the prosecution of the Ministry of Justice.
Messages revealed in a Max development survey showed that the former Boeing pilot who had been found not guilty of fraud in 2022, Mark Forkner, FAA told the abolition of the flight control system known as MCAS manuals and, in a separate email, he boasted of “Jedi-Mind Tricking Regulators” to apply the training equipment.
Lawyers of the family members of the victims launched against the preliminary advocacy agreement last year, which assimilated it to a wrist slap for the company giant, which recently won a contract of a billions to build the new generation fighter and work on other military programs, including the equipment of two new presidential jets.