Shipping firms fined $1.75 million for illegal ocean oil discharges, DOJ says

A shipping company and its vessel-owning affiliate pleaded guilty to federal charges tied to the illegal discharge of oily waste into the ocean, according to the Justice Department.

MSC Shipmanagement Limited, described in the announcement as one of the largest shipping companies in the world, pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to two counts of violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships. The vessel’s owner, Hong Kong Spirit Shipping and Trading Limited, also pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the same law, the Justice Department said. The charges stemmed from conduct aboard the motor vessel MSC Samira III between June 2024 and January 2025.

The two companies were sentenced to pay a combined $1.75 million fine and will serve four years of probation, according to the Justice Department. A second engineer aboard the vessel, Mikhail Tsurikov, previously pleaded guilty to violating the same anti-pollution law and is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 10.

According to the Justice Department, senior officers in the ship’s engine department directed lower-level crew members between June and September 2024 to pump oily bilge water into the vessel’s sewage holding tank using portable pumps and hoses, then discharge it into the sea through the tank’s overboard valve — a method that bypassed the ship’s oil water separator, equipment designed to prevent discharges exceeding 15 parts per million of oil. The required entries documenting those discharges were never made in the ship’s oil record book, as mandated under U.S. and international law, officials said.

The Justice Department further alleged that between September 2024 and January 2025, engine department crew members tricked the oil water separator’s monitoring equipment by running fresh water through it instead of oily bilge water, allowing them to discharge oily waste directly into the sea while falsifying the vessel’s records.

When the MSC Samira III made two port calls in Philadelphia in January 2025, its crew presented the falsified oil record book to the U.S. Coast Guard, according to the Justice Department.

Adam Gustafson, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said foreign vessels that “enter the ports of the United States and present false documents undermine our efforts to preserve our environment and enforce the law.” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said the companies “repeatedly cut corners and covered it up.”

The case was investigated by the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay and the Coast Guard Investigative Service.