Shipping Company MISUGA and Chief Engineer Plead Guilty to Violating Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships

Shipping company Misuga Kaiun Co. Ltd. (“MISUGA”) and the Chief Engineer of the M/V Diamond Queen, Cloyd Dimapilis, pled guilty to violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS, 33 U.S.C. §1905-1915).

Specifically, MISUGA pled guilty to failing to accurately maintain an oil record book with respect to overboard discharges of oily bilge water without the use of required pollution-prevention equipment. As part of the plea agreement, MISUGA admitted that the Chief Engineer Dimapilis knowingly failed to record the overboard discharge of oily bilge water. Chief Engineer Dimapilis pled guilty to falsifying the oil record book and was sentenced to one year of probation.  

 For its punishment, MISUGSA was sentenced to pay a fine of $1.5 million, placed on probation for four years, and ordered to implement a comprehensive Environmental Compliance Plan (“ECP”).

The oily water discharges took place numerous times between April 2019 and May 22, 2020 when the vessel arrived Port Canaveral, Florida. The discharges were reported to the United States Coast Guard by a crew member prior to the vessel’s arrival and Port State Control Examiners were dispatched to the M/V Diamond Queen for inspection where the evidence of a system to bypass the Oily Water Separator (OWS) was discovered.