WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has found that Boeing violated a settlement that allowed the company to avoid criminal charges after two fatal crashes involving its 737 Max plane, prosecutors told a federal judge on Tuesday.
It is now up to the Ministry of Justice to consider whether charges should be filed against the aircraft manufacturer. Prosecutors will tell the court no later than July 7 how they plan to proceed, the Justice Department said.
Boeing has made no changes to avoid violating federal anti-fraud laws — a condition of the 2021 settlement, Glenn Leon, chief of the fraud division of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a letter.
The determination means Boeing could be prosecuted “for any federal criminal violation of which the United States is aware,” including the fraud charge the company hoped to avoid with the $2.5 billion settlement, the Justice Department said.
However, it is not clear whether the government will prosecute the manufacturing giant.
“The government will determine how it will proceed in this case,” the Ministry of Justice said in the official report.
Investigations into the 2018 and 2019 crashes pointed to a flight control system that Boeing added to the Max without notifying pilots or airlines. Boeing downplayed the system’s significance and only revised it after the second crash.
The Justice Department investigated Boeing and settled the case in January 2021. After secret negotiations, the government agreed not to prosecute Boeing on charges of defrauding the United States by misleading regulators who approved the plane.
In return, the company paid $2.5 billion: a $243.6 million fine, a $500 million victim compensation fund, and nearly $1.8 billion to airlines whose Max jets were grounded .
Boeing has faced civil lawsuits, congressional investigations and massive damage to its operations since the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.