A Boeing 737 MAX 7 aircraft lands during an evaluation flight at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington on September 30, 2020.
Lindsey Wasson | Reuters
Boeing will pay $200 million and then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg will pay $1 million to settle charges of misleading investors following two fatal crashes of 737 Max jets, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday.
“In times of crisis and tragedy, it is especially important that public companies and executives provide full, fair and truthful disclosure to the markets. The Boeing Company and its former CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, failed in this most basic obligation,” he said. say the president of the SEC. Gary Gensler in a statement.
The two crashes, one in October 2018 and the other in March 2019, killed all 346 people on board the two flights and led to the worldwide grounding of airliners. The land dam was first lifted in late 2020.
Boeing fired Muilenberg in December 2019 amid the plane’s grounding and comments about when it expected regulators to clear the planes to fly again. The comments also strained the manufacturer’s relationship with the Federal Aviation Administration, prompting a public warning from the regulator.
“Today’s settlement is part of the company’s broader effort to responsibly resolve outstanding legal issues related to the 737 MAX accidents in a manner that serves the best interests of our shareholders, employees and others stakeholders,” Boeing said in a statement.
Neither Boeing nor Muilenburg admitted or denied the SEC’s findings, the agency said.
In January 2021, Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a criminal investigation with the Department of Justice into the planes.
Two damning congressional investigations after the crashes found management, design and regulatory deficiencies in the development and certification of the 737 Max. This led to new legislation to reform aircraft certification, giving the FAA more control over the process.
