Boeing to be charged with criminal fraud by US Justice Department

The US Justice Department is set to charge Boeing with fraud leaving the manufacturer’s decision-makers with a choice to either plead guilty or fight the charges in court.

The news comes as Boeing’s CEO fronted the US Senate last week as part of an inquiry into quality controls and two fatal plane crashes that killed a total of 346 people.

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Boeing is reported to have until the end of the week to decide how it will plea with a deal on offer that will see an independent monitor who will oversee compliance with anti-fraud laws.

One of the key whistle-blowers in the Boeing case, Roy Irvin, told The Today Show on Channel 9 that he doesn’t believe fraud is enough of a charge.

“I believe there is enough arrogance left in the company that they’re not going to plead [guilty],” he said.

“I don’t believe any type of fraud charge would be sufficient for loss of human life, I think there should be more criminal negligence, homicide or manslaughter something like that in my opinion.

“I don’t know where fraud fits into the ballpark of loss of human life.”

Irvin worked in Boeing’s South Carolina manufacturing plant from 2011 to 2017 as a quality investigator and has been outspoken in his criticism of the manufacturer.

Asked what went so wrong, Irvin said: “It was mostly a push for production, they didn’t have sufficiently trained quality department in a lot of ways.

“They had many good people but they also people that were willing to just look the other way. That was a big culture problem they had.”

Irvin also claimed that defects like the one that lead to the Alaska Airlines door incident are commonplace.

“I don’t believe it’s safe, the door blowout on the 737 Max really hit home for me because that was the type of defect we would see almost on a weekly basis, if not more often than that,” he told Nine.

“It wasn’t necessarily to that extent, but missing hardware, missing safety devices on hardware was something we saw on a regular basis.”