Federal prosecutors have recommended to top Justice Department officials that airline manufacturer Boeing face criminal charges, CBS News has learned.
While the recommendation to senior Justice Department leadership is not a final decision, it is the latest development in the ongoing back-and-forth over Boeing's alleged actions. violation of a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. The exact nature of the new charges recommended was not immediately clear.
News of the recommended charges was first reported by Reuters.
The Justice Department earlier this year found Boeing in violation of the deferred prosecution agreement and indicated in court documents that it could pursue charges against the company for conduct linked to two fatal 737 Max crashes in 2018 and in 2019 and beyond.
The Justice Department has until July 7 to notify the federal court of its plans.
The Justice Department and Boeing declined to comment.
The deal said Boeing would pay a $2.5 billion settlement and make certain organizational changes in exchange for the Justice Department dropping a fraud conspiracy charge after a three-year period. That three-year period would have ended in July, at which point the Justice Department would have closed the case against Boeing if it had determined the company had kept its end of the deal.
But in May, federal prosecutors wrote that Boeing “breached its obligations” and allegedly failed to “design, implement and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of US fraud laws throughout its operations”.
Boeing replied in Junetelling the Justice Department that he had followed the terms of the settlement and did not agree that he had violated the agreement.
While the deal came after the two 737 Max crashes, which killed a total of 346 people, Boeing has run into other problems with its planes since then. In January of this year, the cabin door of an Alaska Airlines plane flew in mid-flight. In March, a person familiar with the matter he confirmed to CBS News that prosecutors were looking into whether the blast could affect the deferred prosecution agreement.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
A June Whistleblower's Report raised concerns that Boeing was using defective parts in the construction of its planes.
The report by Boeing employee Sam Mohawk alleges there was a “300% increase” in reports of parts not meeting the manufacturer's standards when it resumed production of the 737 Max. These parts were supposed to be removed from production tracking, but the report alleges that “the 737 program was losing hundreds of nonconforming parts” and “Mohawk feared that nonconforming parts were being installed compliant with the 737 and this could lead to a catastrophic event.”
Another whistleblower, former quality director Santiago Paredes, raised concerns about Spirit AeroSystems, the Boeing supplier that builds most of the 737 Max. walls he told CBS News he was pressured to downplay the problems he encountered while inspecting the airframes. He said in public comments that he often encountered problems while inspecting the part of the plane that suffered the mid-air explosion in January.
Boeing CEO David Calhoun faced one Senate hearing last weekduring which he said the company is “far from perfect” but said it is “committed to making sure every employee feels able to speak up if there's a problem.”
—Kris Van Cleave and Kathryn Krupnik contributed to this report.
