Families of the victims of two fatal 737 Max crashes are asking the American Department of Justice to seek to fine Boeing $24.8 billion, saying the company committed “the deadliest corporate crime in US history”.
That amount is “legally justified and clearly appropriate”, Paul Cassell, an attorney who represents 15 victims’ families, said in a letter sent to the DOJ on Wednesday.
Mr Cassell suggested that $14 billion to $22 billion of the amount could be suspended if Boeing devotes those funds to an independent corporate monitor and improvements to its safety programmes.
He also said that the DOJ should pursue criminal prosecution of the company and that the plane maker’s board of directors should be ordered to meet the families.
The letter comes a day after Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun faced a public grilling from US senators, who called on the company to fix its “broken safety culture”.
Boeing and the DOJ didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment during a US holiday.
Boeing has been under heightened scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers after a fuselage panel on a 737 Max blew off mid-flight in January.
The near-catastrophe sparked a criminal investigation and prompted the department to consider throwing out a deferred-prosecution agreement that was put in place after the 737 Max crashes, which killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. That deal was set to expire just days after the accident.
The DOJ determined last month that the company had breached the 2021 agreement – a conclusion that Boeing refutes – and now has until July 7 to decide what punishment Boeing should face, if any.
Possibilities include criminal charges or drawing up a new deal with additional conditions.
In the letter, the families also called on the DOJ to prosecute Boeing executives who were at the company at the time of the two crashes.
Prosecutors previously indicated to the families that the five-year deadline for bringing criminal charges would probably stop any prosecution effort against individuals.
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
