After two horrific plane crashes, Boeing continued to publicly tout the safety of the 737 MAX.

Remarks denounced by the American policeman of the financial markets (SEC).

Accused of having lied, Boeing finally agreed on Thursday to pay 200 million dollars.

Responsible at the time for these messages, the former general manager of the company Dennis Muilenburg for his part pledged to pay a million dollars in penalties.

If they agreed to pay a penalty, the group as the ex-responsible neither admit nor deny the conclusions of the agency.

They load the pilot

It is mainly a problem with flight software, MCAS, which caused a Lion Air 737 MAX in October 2018 and then a similar Ethiopian Airlines aircraft in March 2019 to nose dive without the pilots being able to find them. to sort out.

The crashes left 346 dead and grounded the 737 MAX for 20 months.

The SEC notably criticizes Boeing for having issued a press release a month after the Lion Air accident, annotated and approved by Dennis Muilenburg, highlighting only certain passages of a report from the Indonesian authorities suggesting that the pilot and a bad maintenance were to blame.

“The 737 MAX was as safe as any plane that had ever flown in the sky”

The document also omitted to mention an internal assessment that MCAS did indeed pose “an aviation safety problem” and that Boeing had already started working on modifications to remedy it.

Boeing and Dennis Muilenburg "have nonetheless assured the public that the 737 MAX is as safe as any aircraft that has ever flown in the sky," the SEC said in a statement.

Six weeks after the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash, Dennis Muilenburg also told analysts and reporters that there had been "no slippage or gaps in the MCAS certification process."

Documents later showed that Boeing had already been aware of information to the contrary, the agency noted.

Mislead investors

Boeing had already admitted in January 2021 that two of its employees had misled a group from the United States Aviation Authority responsible for preparing pilot training for MCAS software.

The aeronautics giant had then agreed to pay more than 2.5 billion dollars to settle certain lawsuits including a criminal fine of 243.6 million, 1.77 billion in compensation to the airlines having ordered the 737 MAX and 500 million for a fund intended to compensate the relatives of the victims.

The SEC found that Boeing and Dennis Muilenburg had violated stock market laws by misleading investors.

“In times of crisis and tragedy, it is especially important that publicly listed companies and their managers provide full, fair and truthful information to the markets.

The Boeing Company and its former boss, Dennis Muilenburg, failed in this most basic obligation,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler commented in the statement.

"Big and profound changes" for three years

The settlement with the SEC "is part of the company's broader efforts to responsibly resolve outstanding legal issues related to the 737 MAX crashes in a manner that best serves the interests of our shareholders, employees and other stakeholders,” responded a Boeing spokesperson.

The group has, since 2019, "made big and deep changes" in order to "solidify security processes and the oversight of security matters", he added.

A lawyer for the families of victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, Robert Clifford, calls for further investigations against "Muilenburg or anyone else who persuaded the government to let the Boeing 737 MAX fly", citing behavior “potentially criminal in nature”.

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