He is the first individual to be prosecuted personally in this case.
Mark Forkner, a former Boeing test pilot, is accused by the US justice of having misled the aviation regulator in the United States during the 737 MAX certification process.
Two such devices crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.
The 49-year-old ex-pilot "provided the agency with false, inaccurate and incomplete information on a new part of the Boeing 737 MAX's flight control system," the MCAS, justifies the Justice Department in a press release.
The regulator, the FAA, had therefore not demanded a reference in the training of pilots in MCAS, a software supposed to prevent the plane from going into nose-down and involved in the two accidents.
"Essential hidden information"
Boeing has already acknowledged its responsibility in the manipulation of the authorities and agreed in January to pay more than $ 2.5 billion to settle certain lawsuits.
The aeronautical giant then admitted that two of its employees had misled the FAA.
Mark Forkner has been formally indicted by a grand jury in Texas with two counts of fraud involving aircraft parts and four counts of electronic communication fraud.
If found guilty, he could theoretically face up to 100 years in prison.
"Mr. Forkner withheld critical information from the regulator in an attempt to save money for Boeing," said Texas federal prosecutor Chad Meacham.
Read alsoThe Boeing 737 MAX authorized to fly?
The anger of the families of French victims
According to prosecution documents, the official discovered in 2016 an important change made to the MCAS.
In a message to a colleague revealed in 2019, he indicated that the software made the plane difficult to fly in a simulator.
But he deliberately chose not to share this information, which had led the regulator not to require specific training of pilots and not to include reference to MCAS in training documents.
"I lied to the regulators"
“Basically, that means I lied to the regulators,” Mark Forkner wrote to his colleague. The 737 Max was formally approved in March 2017 and made its first commercial flight a few weeks later. Then the plane was banned from flying in March 2019 after two accidents that killed 346, Lion Air in Indonesia in October 2018 (189 dead) and Ethiopian Airlines in March 2019 in Ethiopia (157 dead).
During both incidents, the flight control software, the MCAS, got carried away on the basis of erroneous information transmitted by one of the aircraft's two probes.
It was only in October 2018, after the first crash, that the FAA learned of "key details" about MCAS.
All 737 Max were grounded in March 2019 before being allowed to fly again in the United States at the end of 2020, once the software changed.