How Boeing defrauded the United States and escaped with a slap on the wrist

Boeing is facing an additional $243 million in fines as part of its anticipated guilty plea to a felony charge its employees defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration ahead of two fatal crashes of the 737 Max. And yet critics of the deal have some justification for calling it a “slap on the wrist.”

Boeing faces up to $487 million in fines as part of its anticipated guilty plea to a felony charge related to two fatal crashes of the 737 Max. Critics of the deal, however, are calling it a “slap on the wrist.” While corporate guilty pleas by companies the size of Boeing are rare, and there are some terms of the plea agreement that Boeing leadership undoubtedly found onerous, the deal does show the limits of corporate criminal charges. Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a charge that it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration, hiding crucial information about a design flaw on the 737 Max during its original certification process. That design flaw has been tied to crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people, plunging the company into a crisis that led to $32 billion in losses. “The Justice Department does no one any favors by trying to sell this as a tough deal,” said Peter Goeltz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board and now a CNN contributor who consults for transportation companies. “It doesn’t smell like a tough deal.” Under the plea settlement reached late Sunday, a $243 million fine that Boeing agreed to pay back in 2021 could be doubled to $487 million. “That’s what, the price of three 777’s?” Goeltz said. “I’m not sure that it’s a significant fine.”