Ship’s Crew became “Whistleblowers” as the Chief Engineer used ‘Magic Pipe’ to pump out Bilges!

2194

Chief.jpg

Panagiotis Koutoukakis, a Greek national and the chief engineer of a chemical tanker that docked in North Charleston in 2015, was charged this week with falsifying the ship’s oil record book to cover up illegal pollution discharges, according to court documents.  He is facing one felony charge punishable by up to 20 years in prison.  Currently, he is free on an unsecured $25,000 bond while he awaits trial.  He is not allowed to leave South Carolina without the court’s permission.

It has been alleged based on an affidavit filed in federal court that Koutoukakis ordered crew members to bypass the ship’s oil and water separator and discharge oily waste overboard six times from May 2015 through July 2015.  He then failed to record the discharges as required by law in the ship’s oil record book.

In August 2015, the crew members of the vessel docked in North Charleston reported to the U.S. Coast Guard that bilge waste was being discharged illegally into the waters.  They also informed the officials that they had been instructed to use a “magic pipe” — a yellow hose that hooked into various pipes to allow a bypass of the ship’s oil and water separator. Documents show that thousands of gallons of bilge waste has contaminated with petroleum products and oil might have been dumped into the waters.  In the same line of cases, the ship’s Captain pleaded guilty in Charleston to one felony charge of obstructing a U.S. Coast Guard investigation in February.  However, he has not been sentenced as yet.

Did you subscribe for our daily newsletter?

It’s Free! Click here to Subscribe!

Source: The Post and Courier

4 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks for every other informative site. The
    place else may I get that type of info written in such an ideal way?
    I have a project that I am just now operating on, and I’ve been at the look out for such information. I saw similar here: Najlepszy sklep

  2. If some one wants to be updated with hottest technologies therefore he must be go to see
    this web site and be up to date all the time. I saw similar here: Ecommerce

  3. What’s up, its nice piece of writing regarding media print, we all know media is
    a great source of information. I saw similar here: najlepszy sklep and also here: najlepszy sklep

  4. Wow, incredible blog format! How lengthy have you been running a blog for?
    you made running a blog glance easy. The full look of your
    website is fantastic, let alone the content material! You can see similar:
    dobry sklep and here sklep

Comments are closed.