Katherine Firkin: US Correspondent on the call for Boeing to be charged with criminal liability

There's a renewed call for Boeing to be prosecuted after being grilled in the US Senate over its recent safety issues. 

US Justice officials have until July 7th to decide if it lays criminal charges. 

Family members of the 346 victims of two separate crashes involving Boeing planes five years ago were also at the hearing. 

US Correspondent Katherine Firkin told Mike Hosking that they're calling for criminal liability for the company, specifically the upper management. 

She says they want Boeing to be fined almost US$25 billion, and for officials to move forward with criminal prosecution. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time after the States and Catherine Firk and Catherine good morning,
Good morning mate. Are you wearing heavy nitwear?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm not wearing heavy knitwhere Noah, are you asking me
about the heat weeds that's happening over here.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Indeed, I'll come to that in a moment. Now, this
is the CEO thing yesterday with Boeing. Did anything material
come out of that apart from, you know, a show
for the cameras well, it was.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
A show for the cameras. I'm sure sure you saw it.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
It was really quite emotional scenes with family members of
people who've died in those two deadly Bowing crashes in
twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. They absolutely let the CEO,
Dave Calhoun, have it. They confronted him, some called him
a mass killer. Some painted their hands red and said
that the company and he himself had blood on his hands.
But what's interesting what's actually come out of it is

(00:48):
there is this renewed push now for the US Justice
Department to lay criminal charges against the company and against
executives at the company. We already knew that they had
until July seven to make it decision whether they were
going to go ahead and do this, But now that
we've had this Senate hearing that really was quite extraordinary,
there is this renewed push for action against the company.

(01:10):
Relatives of the victims are asking the US Justice Department
to seek a fine of almost twenty five billion US
dollars that's more than forty billion New Zealand dollars. They
also want the authority to move forward with a criminal prosecution.
I do want to point out this all comes at
a time when we have just had another whistleblower come forward.

(01:31):
This person claims the company is knowingly installing defective parts
in some of its aircraft. So it's certain feels like
whatever's going to happen, Boeing's troubles are getting worse before
they get better.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
It's a scandal for the ages. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
The weather, so I was looking, funnily enough, a sort
of forecast for a hurricane into Texas and Mexico. So
you got that down south. So we're dealing with the
heat wise midwest northeast.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
Right, Absolutely, we are dealing with a heat wave.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
And look, I don't want to call Americans wines, but
I'm going to be honest. It is only twenty nine
degrees felsius at the moment in New York exactly. So
you and I probably are not going to really consider
that stupidly hot. But for Americans, it is quite warm
here this time of year. They're calling it an excessive
heat wave. Yesterday we did have eleven cities reach record highs.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
That was in places like Ohio. Detroit. Pennsylvania also got
pretty warm. Today.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
We've got seventy four million people from the Midwest to
the Northeast under these heat alerts. Here in New York,
the Governor Kathi Hokl has said the National Guard will
be on standby in case things get too bad this week.
I'm certainly still in long sleeves, so I don't.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Know what I'm sorry, So, is it forecast to get
worse than twenty nine for the national Guard? Or are
we getting the national Guard out four twenty nine?

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Yeah, Look again, I have to be totally honest.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
I don't totally myself understand what stress is at the moment,
because the forecast for the next couple of days is,
you know, thirty degrees thirty one. I think it's going
to get as high as thirty two. You know, yes,
that is warm for this time of year. Don't really
anticipate we're all going to be falling over fainting, but
they've got the National Guard on standby justin case. Certainly

(03:08):
on the West Coast there are a whole bunch of
wildfires you've probably seen affect in California, very early for
the fire season over there, and the heat is early
for this time of year, but not something your eye
would probably be losing a lot of sleep over.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Very good context, Katherine, appreciate it very much. Go well.
Katherine Fukin has US correspondent.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
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Speaker 3 (03:30):
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