A US District Court Judge in Delaware has sentenced to owner and operator of a Bahamian-flagged 73,740-dwt tanker to pay a US$3 million criminal fine for obstructing justice and concealing deliberate pollution from the vessel, reports Ventura California's gCaptain.
US District Court Judge Richard Andrews for the District of Delaware sentenced Liquimar Tankers Management Services and Evridiki Navigation after they were convicted at trial on all charges, including violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, falsifying ships' documents, obstructing a US Coast Guard inspection and making false statements to inspectors.
Evridiki was fined $2 million and Liquimar was fined $1 million. Each have also been sentenced to a five-year probation period.
In March 2019, the MT Evridiki was inspected by the Coast Guard in Big Stone Anchorage in Delaware Bay after a delivery of crude oil. The jury found that during the inspection, Liquimar, Evridiki and the ship's chief engineer, Nikolaos Vastardis, tried to deceive inspectors regarding the use of the ship's oily water separator (OWS) and oil content meter (OCM), a required pollution prevention device.
Mr Vastardis used a hidden valve to trap fresh water inside the sample line so that the OCM sensor registered zero parts per million concentration of oil instead of what was really being discharged overboard.
'Ocean outlaws and polluters such as these will continue to be vigorously prosecuted to the full extent of the law,' said assistant attorney general Todd Kim for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.
According to the Justice Department, at least three senior employees of Liquimar were involved with creating and sending the fake certificates, which related to the calibration of the OCM and whether pressure relief valves for the cargo were actually tested properly.
While the defendants asked the judge to ignore the forged documents, federal prosecutors referred to forgery as the 'elephant in the room' and told the court that the companies 'failure to address, let along mention this willful misconduct, demonstrates that these defendants are willfully blind if not completely unrepentant.'
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US District Court Judge Richard Andrews for the District of Delaware sentenced Liquimar Tankers Management Services and Evridiki Navigation after they were convicted at trial on all charges, including violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, falsifying ships' documents, obstructing a US Coast Guard inspection and making false statements to inspectors.
Evridiki was fined $2 million and Liquimar was fined $1 million. Each have also been sentenced to a five-year probation period.
In March 2019, the MT Evridiki was inspected by the Coast Guard in Big Stone Anchorage in Delaware Bay after a delivery of crude oil. The jury found that during the inspection, Liquimar, Evridiki and the ship's chief engineer, Nikolaos Vastardis, tried to deceive inspectors regarding the use of the ship's oily water separator (OWS) and oil content meter (OCM), a required pollution prevention device.
Mr Vastardis used a hidden valve to trap fresh water inside the sample line so that the OCM sensor registered zero parts per million concentration of oil instead of what was really being discharged overboard.
'Ocean outlaws and polluters such as these will continue to be vigorously prosecuted to the full extent of the law,' said assistant attorney general Todd Kim for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.
According to the Justice Department, at least three senior employees of Liquimar were involved with creating and sending the fake certificates, which related to the calibration of the OCM and whether pressure relief valves for the cargo were actually tested properly.
While the defendants asked the judge to ignore the forged documents, federal prosecutors referred to forgery as the 'elephant in the room' and told the court that the companies 'failure to address, let along mention this willful misconduct, demonstrates that these defendants are willfully blind if not completely unrepentant.'
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