Remarks as prepared for delivery

We are here today to announce the largest-ever criminal prosecution involving intentional pollution from ships. The case involves a $40 million settlement with Princess Cruise Lines, Ltd., involving a total of five ships that did business in as many as 25 U.S. districts and ports. Ten million of the total penalty has been designated for organizational community service to pay for environmental projects to benefit the maritime environment. This is an extremely important prosecution and a terrific result for the American people and for our oceans.

I want to begin by thanking the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and his staff for their hard work over the last several years in close coordination with the Environmental Crimes Section of the department’s Environment & Natural Resources Division.

I especially want to thank the United States Coast Guard that was involved in this effort at many different levels. Rear Admiral Scott A. Buschman of the 7th Coast Guard District and Director Berkow of the Coast Guard Criminal Investigative Service are here today as well as Rear Admiral Steve Anderson, the Judge Advocate General.

I also want to extend a warm welcome and recognize Captain Jeremy Smart of the United Kingdom’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency for bringing this case to the attention of the United States and doing so in a remarkable manner of exemplary international cooperation.

The investigation was initiated as the result of a request for assistance by the MCA after an engineer reported a discharge of approximately 4,000 gallons of oil contaminated waste off the coast of England in August 2013 from the Caribbean Princess. That investigation determined that particular ship – which also visited approximately a dozen U.S. ports – had been illegally discharging oily waste since 2005 through an illegal “magic pipe.” Key ship personnel concealed the pollution by falsifying the ship’s oil record book, a required log regularly inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard in port.

In addition to using a bypass pipe to circumvent required pollution prevention equipment, the Caribbean Princess and four sister ships engaged in other offenses. They used sea water to prevent alarms from sounding when too much oil was being discharged overboard. And, they discharged oily bilge water when graywater tanks overflowed in the engine room. Meanwhile, their false entries and omissions in the oil record book covered up the pollution.

Let’s be very clear -- Princess engaged in exceptionally serious criminal offenses. It deliberately violated the international law regime designed to make sure that our precious oceans are protected.

The company is being held accountable today because it is responsible for failing to properly manage environmental compliance. Princess itself is to blame because the nature, extent and scope of the crimes involve a striking failure of corporate culture and a serious failure in ship management.

Like most white collar crime and most other cases of this type, the motive in this case was probably financial, avoiding the cost of offloading sludge and oily waste in accordance with legal requirements.

To their credit, Princess Leadership have accepted responsibility and agreed to plead guilty.