Greece’s Chartworld Shipping has been slapped with a six-count indictment by a US federal grand jury over illegal oily-water discharges.
In addition to the manager, Nederland Shipping Corp and chief engineer Vasileios Mazarakis have been accused of failing to keep accurate pollution control records, falsifying records, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering, according to a Justice Department statement.
The charges are said to stem from the falsification of records and other acts designed to cover up the “overboard discharges of oily mixtures and machinery space bilge water” from the Bahamian-flagged 627,986-cbf Nederland Reefer (built 1991).
According to the indictment, on 21 February 2019, the reefer vessel entered the Port of Delaware Bay with a “false and misleading oil record book” available for inspection by the US Coast Guard (USCG).
The US Justice Department alleges that the oil record book “failed to accurately record transfers and discharges of oily wastewater on the vessel”.
Chartworld Shipping, vessel owner, Nederland Shipping Corp, and the vessel’s chief engineer, Greek national Vasileios Mazarakis, are all charged with failing to maintain an accurate oil record book as required by the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, a US law which implements the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL).
The defendants were also charged with falsification of records, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering for destroying evidence of the illegal discharges and directing lower level crew members to withhold evidence from the USCG.
Finally, the corporate defendants are charged with the failure to report a hazardous condition to the USCG, namely a breach in the hull of the vessel and resulting incursion of seawater into tanks on board the vessel that occurred before the vessel came to port in Delaware.
An indictment is merely an accusation and defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.
