A federal grand jury in Wilmington returned a six-count indictment Tuesday charging Chartworld Shipping Corporation, Nederland Shipping Corporation, and Chief Engineer Vasileios Mazarakis for failing to keep accurate pollution control records, falsifying records, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering, the Justice Department announced.
The charges stem from the falsification of records and other acts designed to cover up from the Coast Guard discharges of oily mixtures and machinery space bilge water from the Bahamian-flagged cargo vessel, M/V Nederland Reefer.
According to the indictment, on Feb. 21, the M/V Nederland Reefer entered the Port of Delaware Bay with a false and misleading Oil Record Book available for inspection by the U.S. Coast Guard. The book failed to accurately record transfers and discharges of oily wastewater on the vessel.
The vessel’s management company, Chartworld Shipping Corporation, the vessel’s owner, Nederland Shipping Corporation, and the Chief Engineer of the vessel, Greek national Mazarakis, are all charged with failing to maintain an accurate oil record book as required by the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, a U.S. law which implements the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, commonly known as 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 Coast Guard.
Finally, the corporate defendants are charged with the failure to report a hazardous condition to the Coast Guard – a breach in the hull of the vessel that resulted in seawater going into tanks on the vessel that occurred before the vessel came to port in Delaware.
The case was investigated by the Coast Guard Investigative Service. The case is being prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorney David P. Kehoe of the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section and Assistant United States Attorney Edmund Falgowski of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware.
