On 15 March 2018 in the Rotterdam District Court, Seatrade were heavily fined and two of its executives have been banned from working as a director, commissioner, advisor or employee of a shipping company for one year. The court declined to impose prison sentences on the directors, as requested by the prosecutor. The criminal charges arose out of the sale of four reefer vessels for scrapping which was done in Bangladesh, India and Turkey, in contravention of Regulation (EC) No 1013/2006 of 14 June 2006 on shipments of waste, which implements the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal”. The Regulation prohibits E.U. Member States from exporting hazardous waste to countries outside the OECD. Ships sailing to their final destination will contain large quantities of hazardous substances such as bunker oil, lubricating oil, PCBs and asbestos and, in the case of reefer vessels, HCFCs. The court determined that the four ships were to be categorised as waste as the decision to dismantle them had been made when they sailed from Rotterdam and Hamburg in 2012 and that their sale was in contravention of the Regulation. Seatrade intend to appeal.
In another development relating to the sale of ships for dismantling in Asia, London solicitors Leigh Day announced in December 2017 that they will be bringing a claim in tort for injuries sustained by a metal cutter while dismantling a container ship in Chittagong. The claim is being brought against the ship’s managers, Zodiac Maritime, who had sold the vessel for scrap. Leigh Day maintain that Zodiac knew the methods involved in dismantling vessels in Chittagong, yet it sold the vessel in the full knowledge that it would be broken up in unsafe conditions.
