Shipping Company Sentenced to $750,000 Criminal Penalty for MARPOL Violations

On November 2, 2011 in a same-day proceeding at the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, a Cyprus-based shipping company was charged and pled guilty to failing to maintain an oil record book and to making false statements in connection with the oil record book. Engineers on the bulk carrier ARION SB admitted to using fresh water to trick the oil content monitor on the oil water separator to facilitate the discharge of bilge water, and failing to record those operations in the oil record book. Investigators also found that oil record book entries concerning waste oil incineration operations had false, "estimated," times, rather than the actual times of the operations, which the prosecutors charged as criminally false official statements. A.E. Nomikos Shipping was sentenced to a monetary penalty of $750,000, three years of probation, and implementation of a court-supervised Environmental Compliance Plan. The charges arose from a Port State Control boarding in Portland, Oregon, on October 16, 2011.