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A district court has found Samsung Heavy Industries guilty but the supertanker Hebei Spirit not guilty in connection with Korea's worst oil spill in waters off Taean, South Chungcheong Province on Dec. 7 last year. Samsung Heavy Industries is expected to face enormous costs in future civil proceedings between local victims, Samsung and Hebei Spirit.
The Daejeon District Court on Monday sentenced a 51-year-old master of Samsung Heavy Industries' tugboats identified as Cho to three years in prison and a fine of W2 million (US$1=W1,039) for violating the Maritime Pollution Prevention Act. The court sentenced a 45-year-old tugboat master identified as Kim to one year in jail, ordering him arrested in court and taken into custody.
The court fined Samsung Heavy Industries W30 million as prosecutors had demanded. The 39-year-old master of the sea crane barge was acquitted, as were the 36-year-old master, a 31-year-old navigator and the owner of the Hebei Spirit, the Hong Kong-registered supertanker that collided with Samsung's tugboats.
In its ruling, the court said, "While tugging a super sea crane, the tugboat masters Cho and Kim were negligent in their duties and caused the accident, doing enormous damage to local residents. The court is levying severe punishment on them because they have shown no remorse but blamed bad weather or the supertanker."
But the court said it was difficult to argue that crew of the supertanker and Hebei Ocean Shipping ˇ°should have maintained higher-level vigilance than in normal times or that a single-hull tanker posed excessively high-level danger of colliding." The court also found Kim, the master of the sea crane barge, not guilty, saying, "The court is rejecting the prosecutors' demand, considering that the crane barge is a motorless boat tugged by tug boats, so its master was not in a position to control its navigation."
Cho and the others were indicted on Jan. 21 for causing the worst oil spill in Korean history. The tugboats were tugging the 11,800-ton barge carrying a Samsung Heavy Industries crane around 7:06 a.m. on Dec. 7, 2007 from Incheon Port to Geoje Island, when the barge drifted and collided with the 146,000-ton supertanker in waters five miles northwest of Mallipo, Taean County, South Chungcheong Province, and caused the tanker to spill 12,547kl of crude oil into the sea.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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