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Washington (AP) - The disaster surrounding the crash plane 737 Max is dearly for the US aviation giant Boeing.
The aircraft manufacturer agreed to settle criminal proceedings for fraud and conspiracy allegations in connection with the scandal, the US Department of Justice said.
After two crashes with a total of 346 deaths, Boeing was suspected of having brought its best-selling model series 737 Max onto the market in a rush and neglecting safety.
The US judicial authorities are now accusing Boeing, among other things, of having used misleading information to prevent the government from ensuring the safety of public air travel.
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"The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Air Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and misleading behavior by employees of one of the world's leading aircraft manufacturers," said David P. Burns of the Department of Justice's criminal justice department.
Boeing's employees put profit above honesty and withheld information from the US aviation authority FAA.
Both Boeing and the FAA came under heavy criticism in the wake of the accidents in October 2018 and March 2019.
The main cause of the accident is considered to be defective Boeing control software that was supposed to be repaired quickly.
Instead, it took over a year and a half for the FAA to re-admit the unlucky pilot, who was banned from taking off because of the crashes.
A statement from Boeing was initially not available.
The high penalty should hurt the Airbus rivals, who were badly hit due to the 737 Max scandal and the Corona crisis.
But compared to the immense costs that the debacle over the Group's most important aircraft type has already caused, the sum is still relatively manageable.
Investors reacted comparatively calmly, Boeing's shares initially only fell slightly after the trading hours.
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The 737-Max crisis has already put Boeing under massive financial pressure.
Numerous orders were canceled and Boeing incurred billions in extra costs.
In the three months to the end of September, the fourth quarterly loss in a row was incurred.
The group is reacting to the tight financial situation with drastic cost-cutting measures and wants to reduce its number of employees to around 130,000 by the end of 2021.
For comparison: at the beginning of 2020 Boeing still had around 160,000 employees.
Before the punishment by the Justice Department, a committee of inquiry of the US Congress had already expressed severe criticism of Boeing.
"The Max crashes weren't the result of a single failure, technical error, or poorly managed event," the final report said.
"They were the terrible culmination of a series of false technical assumptions by Boeing engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of management and grossly inadequate oversight by the FAA."
Boeing was also accused of having a "culture of concealment" in the report.
Most of the fines are said to flow to airlines with $ 1.77 billion that were damaged as Boeing customers.
According to the Justice Department, $ 500 million will go to a compensation fund for relatives of crash victims.
On top of that, there was $ 234.6 million imposed on the company by law enforcement agencies as an additional fine.
It remains to be seen whether Boeing is off the hook.
There are also a number of lawsuits against the company because of the 737 Max crashes.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210107-99-938354 / 2