Two Greek shipping companies fined $3.4 million for dumping bilge into NJ waters

Theresa Braine, New York Daily News on Dec 24, 2024

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Two Greek shipping companies will pay $3.4 million in fines after admitting their vessel’s crew dumped oily bilge water into the narrow shipping channel between New Jersey and Staten Island, then falsified records to hide it.

In addition to the fine, the U.S. Department of Justice ordered Avin International Ltd. and Kriti Ruby Special Maritime Enterprises, owner and operator of the offending Motor Tanker Kriti Ruby, to make a $1.1 million community service payment to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The feds also sentenced the two companies to five years of probation “during which they will be subject to environmental compliance plans with a monitorship to ensure future compliance,” the justice department said in a statement.

Both companies pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Newark to violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, falsifying records and obstruction of justice. The charges stemmed from two 2022 port calls, one of them at a petroleum terminal in the Sewaren section of Woodbridge, N.J., that September.

On orders from senior engineering officers, Kriti Ruby crew members bypassed legally required pollution prevention equipment and protocols to discharge the muck straight into the sea via the ship’s sewage system, prosecutors said. They left that detail out of the vessel’s oil record book and hid the pumps and hoses they used.

All this bilge went into Arthur Kill, the 600-foot-wide shipping channel separating New Jersey from New York City’s Staten Island.

Also sentenced Monday were Konstantinos Atsalis, 57, the Kriti Ruby’s former chief engineer, who had pleaded guilty in May to charges related to the New Jersey dumping and record concealment. He was sentenced to time served and a $5,000 fine for conspiring with second engineer Sonny Bosito to conceal pollution by falsifying records. Bosito was also sentenced to time served.

“Maritime pollution is extremely harmful to the environment, and so difficult to detect, especially when the polluters take elaborate steps to falsify records to conceal their crimes,” U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger for the District of New Jersey said in a statement. “Law protecting our seas exist for a reason, and we will work together with our enforcement partners to ensure they are followed, and violators are punished.”

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