Raytheon Used Criminal Schemes to Defraud the U.S. government

Raytheon started in 1922, making vacuum tubes. The tube itself was called “Raytheon,” meaning “light from the gods” in a mashup of Old French and Greek. Today, the company is better known for defrauding the US military and paying bribes to secure military business with Qatar.

In WWII, they moved to radar and, in 1947, put out the first microwave oven, going commercial with the countertop variety in 1967. After WWII, they moved to guided missiles, e.g., the Sidewinder, Hellfire, Patriot, and Phoenix and guidance systems in space missions. After several mergers and sales, they became RTX Corporation in July 2023 with Raytheon, Collins Aerospace, and Pratt and Whitney.  

By the late 1990s, they had eliminated all non-defense work and, by 2015, added cyber security. Today it is a publicly traded U.S. defense contractor with headquarters in VA but several plants in Tucson where they focus on missile systems. Today, more than 90% of their revenues are from military contracts, and in 2012, it was the fifth-largest military contractor in the world and third-largest in the U.S. Revenue in 2019 was $29 billion with profits of $3 billion plus. Raytheon’s shares traded at over $164 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at over US$51.7 billion in November 2018. 

But money is never enough and they have been bad actors. They are facing had two environmental lawsuits; one in Florida for contaminating the groundwater and air; and one in Tucson for contaminated groundwater.

But 2024 has been a special kind of highlight. In August, they had to pay a $200 million fine for wrongful export of defense technology to China, Russia, Iran, and elsewhere totaling 750 violations. $200 million was only half the fine. They kept the other half to police themselves to strengthen their compliance program. Some lawyer was asleep on that one. It didn’t go well.

On October 18, Nick Turse of the Intercept reported that Raytheon agreed to a settlement of $950 million for fraud and bribery.  They bribed a Qatar military official to get the contract. Then they had him defraud the U.S. by filing false documents – not once, but twice regarding NASAM radar and Patriot missile systems. This time, the U.S. is going to watch over them for three years. That’ll scare them straight.

In 2014, the major institutional investors were groups we have heard of before:  Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank among others. It’s not enough that their weapons systems are implicated in war crimes in Gaza, they still bite the hand that feeds them.  When will they stop?