A chief engineer and a second engineer working aboard a Greek-owned and -registered tanker pleaded guilty to violating the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (Marpol) in the Newark federal court in the United States on Tuesday.
The engineers committed several Marpol violations while their vessel was located near a petroleum terminal in Sewaren, New Jersey. The engineers pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the pollution law, including falsifying the vessel's oil record book, before US District Court Judge Esther Salas. They are expected to be sentenced in October.
According to the US Attorney’s Office in New Jersey the charges carry a maximum penalty of six years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
The US Coast Guard and the US Attorney’s office have not divulged details of when the offence took place, reporting only that the engineers were working on a chemical tanker named Kriti Ruby (48,000 dwt). The vessel was built in 2008 and is registered in and managed from Greece.
Chief engineer, Konstantinos Atsalis, admitted in court that crew had knowingly bypassed required pollution prevention equipment by discharging engine room oil waste through its sewage system into the sea. He said he had ordered the crew to hide equipment used to conduct the transfers of oily waste to the sewage tank before the Coast Guard boarded.
He said the violation had also been hidden by falsifying the ship’s oil record book, which was shown to the Coast Guard during the routine inspection.
Second engineer, Sonny Bosito, confessed to concealing the discharge of oily waste into the sea by causing a false record book to be presented to the Coast Guard. He also told the court he had ordered the crew to hide equipment used to conduct transfers from the bilge wells.
Meanwhile, the US Coast Guard’s 2023 annual report highlighted an increase in vessel detentions during port state inspections. However, the report noted that this could be an after effect of the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on inspection regimes.
More than 8 000 inspections were undertaken in 2023, and 101 vessels were issued with detention orders, mostly for fire safety and safety management problems followed by life-saving system inadequacies.
