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Two ship owners accused of illegal shipment of waste

From March 2025, two ship owners will have to appear at the Rendsburg District Court for illegal shipment of waste. The maximum sentence is five years in prison. The opening of the proceedings is likely to set a precedent for how to deal with similar cases, the dates of which are still pending. The trial goes back to an indictment filed by the Kiel public prosecutor's office in 2022. The opening of the proceedings has been postponed repeatedly. The ship owners are accused of having sent the "Westerhamm" to Alang in 2016 for scrapping. The removal of ships for scrap outside the scope of European legislation can be illegal if it violates certain regulations; this primarily concerns the so-called Basel Convention and the EU regulation on the shipment of waste, which prohibits the export of hazardous waste to non-OECD countries such as India. In 2023, the Hamburg public prosecutor's office charged three representatives of the Peter Döhle shipping company before the Hamburg regional court with illegal ship scrapping.This case concerned the scrapping of the "CS Discovery" at the beginning of 2017, which, according to the Hamburg public prosecutor's office, contained around 14,000 tons of hazardous waste. In the case of the "Westerhamm", the Kiel public prosecutor's office investigated not only the two Rendsburg shipowners, but also the Hamburg shipowners Jochen and Christoph Döhle and Döhle's managing director Gaby Bornheim, who is also president of the Association of German Shipowners (VDR). The investigators assumed that the three accused acted as a kind of broker in the scrapping of the "Westerhamm". The proceedings against Gaby Bornheim and Christoph Döhle have since been discontinued. Jochen Döhle, on the other hand, was charged in January 2024. In a separate case, he is accused of aiding and abetting the illegal disposal of waste. Döhle will also have to answer to the Rendsburg district court. It is not yet clear when the proceedings will begin.

Investigations against German ship owners and VDR for suspicion of illegal waste export

For the first time, public prosecutors are taking massive action against German shipping companies who are said to have illegally disposed of scrap ships in South Asia. The President of the Shipowners' Association VDR is also being investigated in connection with the "Westerhamm" which cast off on Nov 2, 2016, from Bremerhaven to Alang, where at more than a hundred shipyards, migrant workers dismantle discarded ship from all over the world - often under questionable working and environmental conditions. Therefore, the two owners of the Rendsburg based shipping company will soon be in court. The allegation against the shipowners from Rendsburg is that when the ship sailed, it was already clear that it would be scrapped in South Asia a few weeks later. Scrap ships are, according to the law, dangerous waste and cannot simply be exported from the European Union. If ships owned by German shipowners are not in EU waters, but in the Far East, in Africa or South America, there is no European law standing in the way of scrapping in South Asia. And even if old vessels anchored in EU ports are sold to non-European buyers for continued operation and only later scrapped, that is perfectly legal. Not infrequently, however, there is the suspicion that it is only claimed that a ship will continue to be operated after the sale, but in reality it has long been clear that it is to be scrapped. This is difficult for investigators to prove. They need evidence that the decision to scrap was made while the ship concerned was still in the EU. In the case of the "Westerhamm", the public prosecutor's office in Kiel believes that they can prove this. On the one hand, at the end of 2016, the ship sailed directly from Bremerhaven to Alang. And on the other hand, the shipowners are said to have already decided in September, i.e. several weeks before leaving Bremerhaven, to sell the ship, if necessary, at scrap prices. The sale itself probably happened at the only stopover on the voyage to South Asia, in the port of Port Said before entering the Suez Canal. When the ship was off Alang, the Rendsburg shipping company is said to have given the captain the order by e-mail to drive the "Westerhamm" onto the beach according to the indictment. In connection with the "Westerhamm", the Kiel public prosecutor's office is not only targeting the two Rendsburg shipowners. The President of the Association of German Shipowners, Gaby Bornheim, is also being investigated. She is the managing director of one of the largest shipping companies in Germany, the Peter Döhle Schifffahrts-KG in Hamburg. The public prosecutor's office in Kiel is also conducting preliminary proceedings against the two owners of the company, Christoph Döhle and Jochen Döhle. According to the chief public prosecutor in Kiel, Henning Hadeler, they are accused of being an "intermediary agent" responsible for the export of the scrap ship. Gaby Bornheim and the owners of the Peter Döhle shipping company are said to have helped the ship actually arrive on the beach in India. German report with photos: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr/schrottschiffe-suedasien-101.html

On the beach...

..at Plot 47 in Alang: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1389594461111528&set=gm.10155515909393943&type=3&theater