Princess Cruise Lines Ltd will have to pay a US$40 million penalty – the largest-ever for crimes involving deliberate vessel pollution in the UK and US. The sentence has been imposed by a US District Judge, for illegally dumping oil-contaminated waste overboard and falsifying official logs to conceal the discharges. According to papers filed in court, the Caribbean Princess had been making illegal discharges through bypass equipment since 2005, one year after the ship began operations. The papers filed in court revealed that Princess admitted that after suspecting that the authorities had been informed, senior ship engineers dismantled the bypass pipe and instructed crew members to lie.
