{"id":8604,"date":"2004-08-01T09:52:07","date_gmt":"2004-08-01T09:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.14\/index.php\/2004\/08\/01\/omi-whistleblower-wins-1m\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T01:22:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T17:22:06","slug":"omi-whistleblower-wins-1m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/omi-whistleblower-wins-1m\/","title":{"rendered":"OMI whistleblower wins $1m"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three seafarers who blew the whistle on illegal dumping from Sabine Transportation tankers have been given a $1m thank you by a US court.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iowa based Sabine was fined $2m by Judge Mark W Bennett who ordered that half the penalty should be awarded to three crew members of the 37,753-dwt Trinity (built 1966) and the 122,000-dwt Juneau (built 1974) who revealed that illegal ocean dumping happened with some frequency on the company\u2019s ships.<\/p>\n

A US court awarded $2.1m to an OMI third engineer \u2013 half the $4.2m penalty imposed on the company \u2013 earlier this week \u2013 so whistleblowing may be emerging as an attractive alternative to entering a lottery for seafarers who want to become rich.<\/p>\n

The court was told the whistleblowers risked their careers with Sabine and within the industry by coming forward and so deserved a statutory reward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case should send a message that polluting our environment and lying to the government will not be tolerated,\u201d said assistant attorney general Tom Sansonetti.<\/p>\n

Sabine admitted it deliberately dumped waste oil, sludge, and oily mixtures from the Trinity and Juneau as well as the 37,276-dwt Sea Princess, (built 1972) and the 31,081-dwt Colorado (built 1994) without the use of the required pollution prevention equipment.<\/p>\n

The deliberate discharges were then concealed in false oil record books in which all overboard discharges must be accurately recorded.<\/p>\n

Sabine also admitted that, on a significant number of occasions the company falsified oil record books and deliberately dumped oily wastes from other vessels in its fleet.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice said Sabine had illegally dumping thousands of gallons of waste oil, hundreds of tons of diesel-contaminated grain, and plastic wastes at sea.<\/p>\n

Two members of the Trinity crew told the US Coast Guard of the illegal dumping of contaminated diesel fuel when the vessel arrived in Jacksonville, Florida, in June 1998.<\/p>\n

A Juneau crew member then blew the whistle at Portland, Oregon, in March 1999 revealing that hundreds of tons of diesel contaminated wheat had been dumped into the ocean.<\/p>\n

In addition to the fine Sabine was put on three years probation by Judge Bennett<\/p>\n

The Justice Department announced in February that it would \u201caggressively pursue\u201d indictments against the owner of Sabine Transportation, Rick D Stickle, as well as five of his senior staff for conspiring to dump 442 tonnes of oil saturated wheat from the Juneau into the South China Sea during a voyage to Portland, Oregon.<\/p>\n

Others named in the indictment were Sabine president, Michael R Reeve;operations vice president, John Karayannides; port engineer, Michael M Krider; George K McKay, master of the Juneau and chief officer, Philip J Hitchens.<\/p>\n

The charges carry possible penalties of up to five years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000 per count.<\/p>\n

Last year, Sabine pleaded guilty to a violation of the Clean Water Act by the dumping of hundreds of tons of rust scale, tank cleaning wastes, and other oily wastes into the Mississippi during a tank cleaning operation.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three seafarers who blew the whistle on illegal dumping from Sabine Transportation tankers have been given a $1m thank you by a US court. Iowa based Sabine was fined $2m by Judge Mark W Bennett who ordered that half the penalty should be awarded to three crew members of the 37,753-dwt Trinity (built 1966) and […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[125],"class_list":["post-8604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-information","tag-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21248,"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8604\/revisions\/21248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewliu.com.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}