Greek judges have blunted the penalties faced by top officials of ferry company ANEK Lines over the fatal loss of one of their vessels more than seven years ago.
ANEK chairman George Katsanevakis and chief executive Ioannis Vardinoyiannis saw a Piraeus appeals court confirm their guilty verdict for negligence leading to serial manslaughter and arson on board the 26,900-gt Norman Atlantic (built 2009).
However, the judges reduced their sentences from 16 years to seven and suspended them on probation.
Even if the sentences had been upheld in their original severity, they would not have actually entailed incarceration but rather monetary fines.
The ANEK-chartered Norman Atlantic caught fire midsea between Greece and Italy in December 2014, causing the deaths of at least 12 people.
By a strange twist of fate, the appeals court handed down its verdict on 18 February — the very day another ropax, the 33,588-gt Euroferry Olympia (built 1995), went up in flames in the same waters causing the deaths of at least eight people.
The Norman Atlantic verdict was just “a partial vindication” of those who perished in the accident, said George Trantalides, who represented the family of one of the victims.
“We saw exactly the same violations of the Solas [Safety of Life at Sea] convention in both the Norman Atlantic and the Euroferry Olympia,” Trantalides told TradeWinds. “The tragedies were therefore unavoidable.”
ANEK did not respond to a TradeWinds request to comment on the verdict.
Grimaldi Lines — the owner and operator of the Euroferry Olympia — has pledged to fully cooperate with the investigation into the accident and said it complied with all international regulations.
Katsanevakis and Vardinoyiannis were not the only people to receive suspended jail sentences over the Norman Atlantic tragedy.
Pavlos Fantakis, the ANEK manager in charge of loading the ship, saw his nominal prison sentence halved from 14 years to seven.
The suspended sentence of financial officer Lazaros Hatziavramidis remained unchanged at six years.
Ten people drowned in the chaos of the evacuation of the Norman Atlantic, including a 15-year-old female stowaway from Lebanon. Two victims burned alive on the car deck: an unidentified male stowaway and a Greek truck driver, who was spending the night in his vehicle.
ANEK has said in its financial reports that the incident poses no risk on its financial position as claims were covered by insurers or settled out of court.
However, an Italian court is still looking into the Norman Atlantic case and may yet apply administrative fines on the ship’s owners and charterers.
Relevant proceedings in the Italian city of Bari have suffered considerable delay due to Covid-19.
The Adriatic Sea route between Igoumenitsa and Brindisi, in which both the Norman Atlantic and the Euroferry Olympia perished, is one of Greece’s main commercial arteries — especially for the brisk trade in highly combustible olive oil.
Hundreds of trucks ply that route on ships every day.
