What are you talking about?

From [1] in 2021:

> The airplane manufacturer broke the agreement by “failing to design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations,” the DOJ said.

He’s not being held responsible for the crime, he’s being held responsible for looking the other way.

The CEO is 100% responsible for designing programs to ensure that the business operates within the parameters of the law.

What else do you think their job is?

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/doj-fines-boeing-over-2point...

After the first accident, Boeing was said to be blaming the pilots, in private, despite knowing about MCAS but not revealing it. They deliberately misrepresented the design (and in particular they minimised the severity of the failure modes) of MCAS to the FAA during the certification process. There are transcripts of the test pilots discussing this stuff. Boeing also heavily lobbied the FAA not to ground the Max 8 despite other jurisdictions grounding the aircraft.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Boeing knew what was going on, and if the CEO didn’t know then he wasn’t doing his job.

There really is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The CEO has the responsibility to make the company work well. If a company build products that injure or kill people, the CEO should be in trouble too. Instead of looking the other way and still get big paychecks and bonuses, improve design, testing, all company processes and make the company build products that work.