The Justice Department must decide by July 7 whether to reinstate the criminal charges against Boeing for the deaths of 346 in two 737 MAX plane crashes more than five years ago. Glenn Leon Chief Fraud Section Criminal Division Department of Justice The Department will be meeting with the victims’ families in Washington, D.C. on April 24. Naoise Connolly Ryan, who lives in Ireland with her two young children, lost her husband Mick Ryan in the Ethiopian crash in 2019. “We assume that the Department of Justice will ask for the charges against Boeing to be dismissed,” Ryan told Corporate Crime Re ..read more

Earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced that the Department of Justice will launch a whistleblower awards program. Lisa Monaco Monaco said that other U.S. whistleblower award programs, such as those at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)  “have proven indispensable” and that the Department of Justice plans to offer awards for tips not covered under these programs. “We hope that the Department will follow the lead of the SEC and CFTC and establish a central whistleblower office that can accept anonymous ..read more

The families of the 346 people who died in two Boeing 737 MAX crashes five years ago are racing to unearth incriminating documents in an effort to persuade the Justice Department to reopen the criminal case against the company. U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell Washington, D.C. Looming over the families are two deadlines — July 7, 2024 by which time the Justice Department must decide whether Boeing violated the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement. And April 24, 2024 when the Justice Department has scheduled a meeting in Washington, D.C. to consult with the families about the crimi ..read more

Austin Frerick grew up in the state with arguably the most fertile soil in America – Iowa. That soil is now being used to grow corn and soybeans to feed animals that have been taken off the land and put into giant sheds – confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The corn is also being used for corn syrup and its now number one use – ethanol. Frerick says we need to reverse the process, take the animals out of the industrial sheds and put them back on the land.  How?  Repeal the corporate welfare portions of the farm bill. He lays out his vision in Barons: Money, Power, and the Co ..read more

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week sued to block the largest proposed supermarket merger in U.S. history – Kroger Company’s $24.6 billion acquisition of the Albertsons Companies – alleging that the deal is anticompetitive. William Kovacic GWU Law The FTC action was cheered by public interest groups across the board. “A Kroger-Albertsons merger would have been a disaster for workers, consumers, and farmers, and represented the worst of grocery store consolidation,” Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert said. “The FTC said clearly that superstores cannot merge their way to dominance. We applau ..read more

Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought an enforcement action against JP Morgan Securities (JP Morgan) for impeding hundreds of advisory clients and brokerage customers from reporting potential securities law violations to the SEC. Stavroula Lambrakopoulos K&L Gates Washington, D.C. JP Morgan will pay $18 million to settle the action. The SEC said that JP Morgan regularly asked retail clients to sign confidential release agreements if they had been issued a credit or settlement from the firm of more than $1,000.  The agreements required the clients to keep con ..read more

Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) criminal enforcement actions were down last year, with the Department of Justice resolving fewer matters in 2023 compared to 2022. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) slightly increased its enforcement actions. Keisha Stanford Jenner & Block Out of the fifteen actions that the Department resolved last year, more than half were enforcement actions brought against individuals as opposed to corporations.  The Department has publicly expressed its priority of prosecuting individuals, and last year’s enforcement trend is consistent with the Dep ..read more

Kayak, a popular airline booking website and app, has built in a feature that allows passengers to screen out flights that are scheduled to use any 737 MAX airplane. The public is increasingly wary about flying the MAX because of two crashes that killed 347 passengers – one in Indonesia in October 2018 and one in Ethiopia in March 2019. Then last month, on January 5, 2024,  a door plug blew out midair on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX. Remarkably, the plane returned safely and no one was killed.  An initial National Transportation Safety Board investigation found that four bolts used to ..read more

Polls show that the majority of Americans favor a single payer Medicare for All system, similar to the one adopted by most industrialized countries – everybody in, nobody out, no premiums, no deductibles, free choice of doctor and hospital.  The majority of doctors in most polls support single payer.  But historically, the main organization of physicians and medical students in the United States – the American Medical Association – has opposed it.  Back in the 1960s, when there was an early push to create Medicare for seniors, doctors hired Ronald Reagan to help defeat the idea ..read more

Corporate crime finally got a hearing in Congress.  The Senate Judiciary Committee held the hearing, which it titled – Cleaning Up the C-Suite: Ensuring Accountability for Corporate Criminals. Senate Crime Investigating Committee members. Left to right: Senator Charles Tobey, Senator Herbert O’Conor, Rudolph Halley, Senator Estes Kefauver, and Senator Alexander Wiley. That’s according to a front page article in the February/March 2024 edition of the Capitol Hill Citizen. In recent months, public interest groups had been lobbying Democrats in Congress to do a deep dive into the problem of ..read more