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Boeing said it was cooperating with the U.S Department of
Justice investigation.
The prosecutors have questioned several Boeing employees in
recent months, focusing on whether Mark Forkner, a top pilot at
the company, intentionally lied to the regulator about the
nature of new flight control software on the jet, according to
the report.
A lawyer for Forkner did not immediately respond to a Reuters
request for comment.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not immediately
respond to requests for comment.
Forkner had said he might have unintentionally misled
regulators, in a series of internal messages from 2016 that
became public in October.
The messages appeared to have been the first publicly known
observations that the MCAS anti-stall system behaved erratically
during testing before the aircraft entered service.
The comments by Forkner, who has since left Boeing, were among
those pinpointed by U.S. lawmakers in hearings in Washington as
evidence that Boeing knew about problems with flight control
software before two crashes of its 737 MAX aircraft in October
2018 and March 2019 killed 346 people.
Bloomberg News reported late on Friday that the planemaker had
put three employees who worked with the former chief technical
pilot of the 737 MAX on administrative leave, with the employees
being notified of the action last week.
Boeing shares closed down 1.8% at $330.38.
(Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru; additional reporting
by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Shailesh Kuber)
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