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Princess Cruise Lines and its parent company Carnival Corporation have agreed to pay a $ 20 million fine for environmental offenses.
Casey Rodgers / AP
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Casey Rodgers / AP
Princess Cruise Lines and its parent company Carnival Corporation have agreed to pay a $ 20 million fine for environmental offenses.
Casey Rodgers / AP
Cruise line giant Carnival Corporation and its subsidiary Princess have agreed to pay a $ 20 million fine for environmental offenses such as the dumping of plastic waste into the ocean. Princess Cruise Lines has already paid $ 40 million for other deliberate acts of pollution.
US District Judge Patricia Seitz approved the terms of the agreement during a hearing Monday in Miami. She seemed increasingly frustrated as society continued to flout environmental laws during her multi-year trial.
"You're not just working for employees and shareholders, you're a caretaker of the environment," she told Arnold Donald, Carnival's CEO, who attended the hearing with D & D. Other leaders. "The environment must be a core value and I hope and pray that it will become your daily hymn."
Miami-based Carnival pleaded guilty on Monday to six probation offenses, including the spill of plastic mixed with food waste into Bahamian waters. The company also admitted to having sent teams to visit ships prior to inspections to address environmental compliance violations, falsify training records and contact the US Coast Guard to try to redefine what would be a "major non-compliance" of its environmental compliance plan.
"I sincerely regret these mistakes and take responsibility for the problems we have encountered," Arnold told the judge. "I personally have been extremely disappointed and personally committed to achieving the best results in terms of compliance."
Carnival has a long history of dumping plastic waste and oil spills from its ships, dating back to 1993.
Environmental groups such as Stand.earth say they are tired of seeing the company hit by sanctions "that can not even be called slaps".
"Today 's decision is a betrayal of public confidence and a continuation of the weak enforcement that allowed Carnival Corporation to continue to profit from the sale of the company. environment to its passengers, while its cruise ships contribute to the destruction of the fragile ecosystems that they visit, "Kendra said. Ulrich, a stand.earth marine campaigner, said in a statement.
When Princess was fined $ 40 million in 2016, the Justice Department called it "the largest criminal penalty ever imposed for deliberate pollution of ships". The company also agreed to plead guilty to seven counts of violating the law on five vessels as early as 2005.
In 2013, an early warning engineer denounced the illegal dumping of contaminated waste and oil from the company's Caribbean Princess vessel. He told the authorities that engineers were using a special device called "magic hose" to bypass the ship's water treatment system and dump the oil waste directly into the ocean. The company has also tried to hide this practice from investigators, according to the Department of Justice.
At the time, Princess told NPR that the offenses were "attributable to the inexcusable behavior of our employees".
Part of the 2016 Advocacy Agreement required that the ships of eight Carnival Group companies submit to court-supervised surveillance, which explains the way in which the most recent violations have occurred. been discovered.
Judge Seitz had recently threatened to prevent the carnival from berthing in US ports. She had also asked the company's senior executives to attend Monday's hearing because she was convinced that they were not really keen on compliance with environmental laws.
In addition to the $ 20 million criminal sanction, Carnival has agreed to pay for 15 annual audits – out of about a dozen ship audits and ashore, it's already about to pay it – and announces the restructuring of its compliance efforts. If the company fails to comply with court-ordered delays in restructuring, it will be fined up to $ 10 million a day.
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