Aircraft giant Boeing argued to the Justice Department on Wednesday that the company has held up its end a 2021 deferred prosecution agreementand rebuffed federal prosecutors who wrote last month that the planemaker had violated the agreement and risked prosecution, two people familiar with the discussions confirmed to CBS News.
Boeing's response came after prosecutors told a federal judge in Texas in May that the company had breached a deal that would have prompted the Justice Department to drop criminal charges related to the two accidents of the 737 Max in 2018 and 2019 — which killed a total of 346 people — because prosecutors said Boeing failed to establish sufficient compliance measures.
Boeing responded Wednesday and said it disagreed, the two people said. Bloomberg first reported the news.
A federal judge in Texas oversees the back-and-forth between the parties. Boeing had until Thursday to counter the Justice Department's claims.
When contacted by CBS News, the Justice Department declined to comment on the report.
In January 2021, Boeing and the federal government reached a settlement in which the company agreed to pay a $2.5 billion settlement and comply with certain stipulations in exchange for the Justice Department dropping a fraud conspiracy charge after three years. That three-year period was scheduled to expire in July.
However, federal prosecutors wrote last month that Boeing “breached its obligations” under the deferred prosecution agreement, in part by allegedly failing to “design, implement and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of US fraud laws throughout its operations.”
In January, the cabin door of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-MAX 9 exploded minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon. Then, in March, a person familiar with the matter he confirmed to CBS News that prosecutors were looking at whether anything that caused or contributed to the explosion could affect the deferred prosecution agreement.
In a statement provided to CBS News on Wednesday, a Boeing spokesperson said that “we do not wish to comment on any specific communications with the Department of Justice, but we continue to engage transparently with the Department, as we have done during the 'okay.'
