Ship's Engineer Details Dumping Deception

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Ship’s Engineer Details Dumping Deception

by Nick Vinocur | Aug 30, 2007 10:18 am

Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Environment, Legal Writes

Facing jail time in a federal deep-sea pollution trial, a Filipino engineer accused of lying to U.S. maritime authorities lashed out against his Greek employers in federal court in New Haven, saying he had been pressured into his lies by higher-ups onboard a leaky oil tanker.

The embattled testimony Wednesday came on the sixth day of a trial against Ionia Management S.A., a Greek shipping company charged with deep-sea pollution violations and falsifying ship records to conceal illegal discharges of waste oil. The trial, which opened last week, is being held at the federal courthouse on Church Street in New Haven.

Click here, here, and here for previous stories on the trial.

Edgardo Mercurio (pictured leaving the courthouse with his lawyer) was the second engineer aboard the M/T Kriton, an oil and gas tanker that was detained in New Haven Harbor last March. While another crew member had secretly reached out to the Coast Guard with information about a “magic pipe” used to make the illegal discharges, Mercurio told workers in the tanker’s engine room to lie to Coast Guard officers who were investigating the tip.

As a result of his actions, Mercurio faces four counts of criminal conspiracy and obstruction of justice in Connecticut, in addition to similar charges in New York, Florida and Montreal. He pleaded guilty in Connecticut last July after reaching a plea agreement with the US District Attorney’s office, but still faces up to six years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

However, in his testimony before U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton Wednesday, Mercurio sought to deflect responsibility for his crimes, accusing the Kriton’s chief engineer of having master-minded the illegal discharges and fudged the tanker’s record books to cover his tracks.

The Kriton, like all vessels of its type and tonnage, is required by international law to process its oily waste products onboard using pollution-control equipment. Two such devices — an oily water separator (OWS), designed to process bilge water; and an incinerator meant to burn oil sludge — were present onboard the Kriton. But several witnesses have already testified that they rarely if ever saw the equipment being used to process waste on the Kriton.

As a result, prosecutors have focused on the oil record book as the most important piece of material evidence in their case against Ionia Management S.A. If they manage to convince the 16-member jury that the chief engineer manufactured entries, Ionia could face up to $9 million in environmental pollution fines. Recently, an American shipping company was convicted on similar charges and slapped with $39 million in fines and community service payouts, the largest penalty ever handed down in a deep-sea pollution trial.

During direct examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Brown showed Mercurio an extract of the tanker’s oil record book, a log in which all transfers of oily waste products are meant to be recorded. Brown asked him to identify the author for the court.

“That is the signature of Chief Engineer [Petros] Renieres,” Mercurio said.

Pointing to an entry from October, 2006, he added: “This reading is incorrect. There was no transfer on this day. He [the chief engineer] never told anyone to do that.”

Other extracts shown in court indicated that both the OWS and incinerator were used regularly since mid-2006. Mercurio, who was responsible for activating the pollution-control equipment, testified that the oil transfers recorded in the log book were entirely imaginary.

In one entry, for example, Renieres had written that the incinerator ran for twenty hours, and the OWS was used to process 4 cubic meters of bilge water.

That, Mercurio said, was impossible.

During his time on board, the incinerator had remained dormant, as had the oily water separator, he added.

Instead, Chief Engineer Renieres told him to attach a “magic hose” to an opening in the tanker’s bulkhead and dump the oily wastes overboard, he said. The first discharges happened during a crossing from England to Estonia; in time, Mercurio said, they became routine.

Duping the Coast Guard

When the Coast Guard homed in on the Kriton last March, the chief engineer approached him with an order: Dispose of the “magic hose” — and coach crew-members to lie about its existence.

“He [Renieres] was looking for me,” he said. “He wanted the hose.”

“I gave him the flange [connector] and the hose. He was carrying a hacksaw blade. We chopped it in half. After I gave him part of the hose, him and the fourth engineer headed into the engine-room workshop.”

“The half I had, I hid it in a box in the engine-room with other flexible hoses.”

Later, “the third engineer signaled to me that the hose was chop-chopped and thrown overboard,” Mercurio said.

After the first Coast Guard investigating team had left the tanker, Mercurio reported that he was called into the chief engineer’s cabin.

“The chief engineer called me and said, ‘tell our people not to tell the truth to the Coast Guard, especially Mr. Lalu.”

Ricky Lalu, an oiler on-board the ship, testified last Thursday in the same trial. He had taken cell-phone pictures of the “magic hose” in position, but didn’t immediately give them to investigators because he feared criminal prosecution for his role in the dump-outs.

Mercurio said he had ordered three engine-room workers to lie to the Coast Guard. Asked why, he said he had done so because he feared losing his job and engineering license, and worried about not being able to support his family in the Philippines.

During cross-examination, Ionia counsel George Chalos questioned Mercurio’s recollection of the facts, arguing that he couldn’t possibly remember what happened in October 2006.

“Where in the world were you on October 6, 2006?” Chalos asked, referring to the date of the oil record book entry shown in court.

“I don’t know…I can’t remember where we were going or where we were coming from,” Mercurio replied.

Chalos then suggested that Chief Engineer Renieres may have done the oil transfers himself and recorded them truthfully in the log.

“You don’t know if the chief engineer did the transfers himself, do you?” Chalos said.

“I don’t know,” Mercurio replied. “But how could you have a transfer without an incinerator?” When bilge water is processed through the OWS, the remaining product, a thick oil sludge, is generally burned in the incinerator, according to several witnesses.

Chalos – whose defense of Ionia has largely rested on the claim that the company provided pollution-awareness training to the Kriton’s crew – asked Mercurio if he was aware that, if caught dumping oil overboard, he would be fired on the spot.

Mercurio said he knew this from his training, but had been acting on orders from the chief engineer.

Both parties have told Judge Arterton that they expected to wrap up their cases on Thursday.

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