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Comment by lukan | Hacker News Reader

"In May, officials determined the company breached a 2021 agreement that had shielded Boeing from a criminal charge of conspiracy to commit fraud arising from two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving the 737 MAX jet.

Under the 2021 deal, the Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing over allegations it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration so long as the company overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports. Boeing also agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle the investigation"

The 2.5 billion sound like a bribe to me, to avoid criminal charges. And Boeing thought that was enough, but it seems they did not assume that the FAA was also serious, that they still need to "overhaul its compliance practices and submitted regular reports".

edit: we are talking about potential manslaughter in hundreds of cases here, because this is what a criminal investigation could lead to, not a fine for violating arbitary regulations

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If the executives where smart they would have left after getting the deferred prosecution agreement. That way they could claim that it wasn't in their hands anymore and therefore they are not responsible.

Deferred prosecution should be eliminated and if a company is too big to fail then it should be nationalized and the execs should face prosecution.

> The 2.5 billion sound like a bribe to me, to avoid criminal charges. And Boeing thought that was enough, but it seems they did not assume that the FAA was also serious, that they still need to "overhaul its compliance practices and submitted regular reports".

To be honest it might have been just enough, since nothing was done. If they had been serious before, they would have planned some sort of check or control as a follow up to that 2021 decision, but they didn't.

But then doors started falling from the skies and people started to have questions about what kind of shoddy plane building they were allowing.

That's when the FAA started their investigations.

Doors started falling from US based airlines.

Boeing got unlucky in that sense. Had it been a flight out of Africa or Asia then I suspect regulators would still be turning a blind eye.

Gees I wonder if the federal government would offer Joe Public a second chance if he defrauded them.

If he paid 2.5 billion then most probably yes.

Also, if the government depended on Joe Public for all sorts of military and civilian projects, that would help.

That happens all the time. You find a good lawyer, the lawyer goes to the prosecutor and says "this is going to end with a fine of about x, why don't we save ourselves work and my client just pays x straight away?" If the assessment is sound and the prosecutor would rather do something else...

That never happens after an indictment without a plea.

I'm not aware of it ever happening before an indictment, either. People don't always know that they're under investigation, and, even if you know that you're being investigated, many (if not most) investigations don't end with indictments -- they're quietly dropped -- so it can be quite dangerous to do what you suggest, as it makes an indictment far more likely.

I know about it happening in several jurisdictions. A nice big donation to the Red Cross and a quiet chat with a contrite attitude.

Every course of action is risky if you've done something illegal and the relevant authority is aware of it.

I think it's a stretch to say that a written deal in which a party pays damages is a bribe by that party.

If this payment avoids potential criminal charges about manslaughter, I think it is not.

It's not a bribe, or even like a bribe, unless the individuals on the government side of this deal were personally enriched from this settlement (they weren't.) That 2.5 billion was paid to the government, not to the justice department personnel.

It is definitely possible to also bribe organisations.

The individual members will profit and some members even more.

Also note, that I did not claim it is a bribe, but that it sounds to me like this (as a non lawyer).

Because we are talking about potential manslaughter here.

We regularly use fines to punish businesses, usually in combination with conditions for regulatory or legal compliance. I don't recall people calling it a bribe in these cases. This happens in the EU a lot.

Fines for murder cases are not that common. Boring killed those passengers, a criminal investigation would have looked into that. Sure looks like a bribe.

This isn’t a murder case, it’s a fraud case. There’s zero chance of conviction on murder.

That is right. It is not murder, but it would be something that could lead to manslaughter charges.

Those people are dead because of Boeing. Corporate manslaughter is a thing in UK.

And let’s not be under illusion that if my actions accidentally resulted in deaths of hundreds of people I would see any fresh air ever again

Manslaughter != murder, thats a difference between 3 years and 15-to-life in prison (not in Norway though).

Also, don't fall under the spell of some absolute fairness of our current societies, of course ultra rich are treated differently than regular Joe (or ie former presidents, prime ministers, olympic gold medalists etc), at least until mass media gets in. And Boeing is a strategic military provider not only to US, more a typical 'too-big-to-fail' category.

But if it would be 3 years per manslaughter, it would add up to life in prison, since we are talking about hundreds of dead people. (but no idea if this is how it would work, I know it is like this with other cases).

And surely we know that society is not fair. That does not mean, we have to accept that.

In Germany, there was a murder case of someone driving a car with over 100km/h through a city and killing a pedestrian. Not manslaughter, murder. Who conspires to maximise profit when putting a new plane design in the air by circumventing safety rules, lying to regulators and pilots, shutting up whistle blowers and in general ignoring safety during construction, aims at killing people. That's premeditated. That's murder.

I would be happy for them to be charged with manslaughter, but that’s not happening either right?

Probably not. _3u10 is right, this is only a fraud case. And Boeing is also providing military hardware, so under full government protection. Trump would pardon them directly, Biden just not foster a DOJ the investigation, while the three letter agencies will do their usual work to keep the civilians at bay. At least that's what I would suspect.

This is what happened in Canada when SNC Lavalin paid millions in bribes to Gadaffi in Libya. They fired the attorney general who wanted to prosecute them.

A certain nation has a lot of earthquakes. They also have a notoriously corrupt construction industry. Bad combination.

Whenever they have a temblor, buildings fall down, and people die.

There’s usually one or two high-profile prosecutions, with a lot of saber-rattling, but the hubbub dies down, pretty quickly, and it happens again, the next time there’s an earthquake.

They also straight up killed a whistleblower or two, apparently

They may well have, but the government hasn't proven it.

Criminal charges maybe on the government side too?

Indeed. For a very good book on the subject, read "The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives" (2017)

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