Brazilian Embraer supports lawsuit against Boeing for putting sovereignty at risk by hiring engineers

The Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer denounced on Tuesday, together with entities from the air defense sector, the US manufacturer Boeing for recruiting highly qualified Brazilian personnel, which puts national sovereignty at risk for his policy of “coopting” brains.

Embraer informed, through a statement, that it supports the actions presented by the Brazilian Association of Defense Materials Industries (ABIMDE) and the Brazilian Aerospace Industries Association (AIAB) before the Federal Court of Sao José dos Campos, in São Paulo, so that Boeing stops “coopting” qualified engineers who worked in the Brazilian companies Embraer, Akaer, Avibras, AEL Sistemas and Safran.

“Embraer supports the judicial action initiated against Boeing. We follow the instances of the case knowing that this is a matter of national interest,” the document said.

AIAB president Julio Shidara estimated that in 12 months Boeing hired more than 200 highly qualified Brazilian professionals specializing in security, defense and the aerospace sector.

“In their decades of existence, the companies that are part of the Strategic Defense Industrial Base (IDB) had never faced a situation like the one we are experiencing (…) the survival of national companies and national sovereignty is threatened,” Shidara was quoted as saying by the Estado news agency.

As explained by the local press, given the lack of engineers within Boeing’s staff, they dedicated themselves to “co-opting” highly qualified professionals because they possess “classified” information for strategic Brazilian projects, a fact denounced by the lawsuit.

In this regard, Shidara highlighted that Boeing had access to Embraer’s confidential information between 2018 and 2020, when the US company announced the purchase, later frustrated, of the commercial aviation part of the Brazilian construction company.

Boeing is the second largest aircraft manufacturer in the world behind the European Airbus consortium, while Embraer is the third largest producer of commercial, military and executive aircraft and maintains a defense sector in which the Brazilian federal government participates.

With information from Xinhua

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