Could they potentially face jail time in Ethiopia or Indonesia (where the doomed flights flew from, and the airlines are based)? I'm sure there would be quite the fight over extradition, but it would certainly send the message that you can't escape your negligence because of an eye to corporate profit on a global scale.
There would not be a fight over extradition, at least as long as the executives stay in the USA. The USA does not have an extradition treaty with either Ethiopia or Indonesia, and the USA won't even consider extradition if they are convicted of a crime that doesn't exist in the USA.
Doesn’t criminal negligence exist in the US, along with a number of other statutes that could apply? Not to say they would face trial here if the events occurred here, but there are laws that would apply given sufficient evidence of wrongdoing.
First, I am not a lawyer. Yes, negligence can be tried as a criminal act, but there's no way this situation would pass the Justice Department's sniff test. Any negligence that would have happened almost certainly happened on US soil. Even though foreign governments are free to convict however they like, if the act happened on US soil and the US doesn't find you guilty of a crime, then there is no way they are handing you over. If in the unlikely case an executive is found guilty of a crime in the USA they would serve out their sentence in the USA first before extradition is considered. Even then, we'd be real reluctant to hand them over.
What I think is more likely to happen (but still unlikely) is that Boeing is penalized through corporate liability. The aggregation of the executives' actions create a responsibility for Boeing, although no single person's actions meet any criminal action. In that case the USA would fine Boeing or punish it in some other way, but I don't think that money is going to Ethiopia or Indonesia.
Lastly, since we don't have extradition agreements with either of those countries these arguments would probably not even come up, as we'd tell their embassy to go pound sand- we're not handing over American citizens until you reciprocate with us, prove that your courts are not kangaroo courts, and sign an extradition agreement. And there's no way we're signing one- you think the Trump administration is going to sign an extradition agreement with either of those countries? No, these guys are going to skate.
Some references, they probably don't hit everything but they are a good start:
Extradition not required. Start threatening their business in these countries. They could try something like "no Boeing aircraft in our airspace" while they refuse to cooperate. Get their local allies on board with a similar ban, and then maybe the Boeing board would hand them over willingly.
That's quite the hypothetical, and I don't advocate it. But they certainly don't have to be limited by extradition.
Sure they can. They can physically make it happen. Put money in the right hands and it happens.
Morally, ethically, legally questionable. But certainly not impossible.
I'm sure they'd just fire the executive(s) in question first. Lots cleaner and maybe cheaper depending on the golden parachute in the executive's back pocket.
