Presumably when it is shown beyond a reasonable doubt that they conspired or deliberately overlooked the fraud. The prosecutor has every incentive to get participants to roll over and follow the conspiracy as high up the ladder as it goes. Successfully prosecuting such a large profile case, particularly with defendants with very little public sympathy, would make his/her career.

>The prosecutor has every incentive to get participants to roll over and follow the conspiracy as high up the ladder as it goes.

This is naivette.

See this:

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/lead-boeing-...

From the article:

the case was settled with a deferred prosecution agreement — an agreement that Columbia Law Professor John Coffee at the time called — “one of the worst deferred prosecution agreements I have seen.”

Boeing did not have to plead guilty to any of the allegations.

No Boeing executive was charged.

And the Boeing deferred prosecution agreement included an unusual provision finding that a compliance monitor was not necessary because “the misconduct was neither pervasive across the organization, nor undertaken by a large number of employees, nor facilitated by senior mismanagement.”

“That is without precedent,” Coffee told Corporate Crime Reporter earlier this year. “I have not seen that anywhere else and I’ve looked at a number of deferred prosecution agreements. Prosecutors themselves are not conducting the investigation.”

Boeing’s lead corporate criminal defense law firm is Kirkland & Ellis.

Erin Nealy Cox, the lead prosecutor in the Boeing case, left the Justice Department earlier this year.

And last month she joined Kirkland & Ellis as a partner in its Dallas office.

Wow. Thanks for the background. It seems to me there should be a special investigator appointed to look into potential prossecutorial misconduct here.

Since you’re not going to find any documentation of that because of CYA, and Boeing is the flagship US aircraft manufacturer with a protected (as in ‘in the interest of national security’ protected) position to offset Airbus - that’s pretty much not going to happen.

I think it would be possible to ring-fence the individuals to be prosecuted, facilitate an orderly handover of power inside Boeing, and then prosecute the individuals without risking mortal damage to the company.

That ring should probably extend around McDonnell Douglas' management from the 90s, which made their ways into the upper echelon of Boeing during the merger.