By Eric Freedman
A German shipping company faces felony charges for illegal disposal of oil-contaminated material in the Great Lakes and submission of falsified records to the Coast Guard as part of an alleged cover-up.
A federal grand jury in Minneapolis indicted Mineralien Schiffahrt Spedition und Transport GmbH under Transport (MST) on charges of violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships and making false record entries in a federal investigation.
The indictment didn’t charge any individual crew members or company officials.
The company is based in Schnaittenbach, Germany, and its cargo ship is flagged in Liberia.
Federal prosecutors said MST-operated M/V Cornelia experienced significant leakage of oily wastewater between February and October 2015. At least 10 times during that period, its chief engineers and second engineers told engine room crew members to transfer contaminated bilge water to a clean tank that should contain only clean, oil-free water, according to the indictment.
The crew was then told to discharge the oily wastewater overboard, according to the indictment, which does not identify the lake or lakes where the illegal dumping occurred.
“On each occasion in which oily wastewater was transferred internally and then discharged overboard, the chief engineer intentionally failed to record the transfers and subsequent discharges in the M/V Cornelia’s oil record book,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press statement. “This gave the false impression in the oil record book that all of the oily wastewater had been properly handled and disposed.”
The company faces a maximum criminal fine of $4.5 million if convicted of all charges, said Ben Petok, the communications director for the U.S. Attorney’s Office
According to the indictment, the Coast Guard inspected the 16,807-ton ship when it entered U.S. waters from Canada at the Port of Detroit last Oct. 28 with “false and fictitious” entries in its oil record book
Coast Guard inspectors discovered the alleged crimes last November when the M/V Cornelia docked in Duluth to load grain for Africa. At that time, the ship’s documents “failed to record numerous discharges overboard and disposals otherwise of oil residue and machinery space bilge water that had occurred between in or about February 2015 and in or about October 2015,” the indictment said.
Authorities detained the ship in the Port of Duluth for more than a month while the investigation was underway.
The indictment resulted from a joint investigation by the Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The company and its defense lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.