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Sentence of Polaris Shipping CEO increased
Kim Wan-joong, CEO of the South Korean shipping company Polaris Shipping, has been sentenced to three years in prison for negligence in connection with the March 2017 refit of the 'Stellar Daisy'. The sentence was an increase of an earlier sentence in the district court, where Kim Wan-joong was sentenced to half a year in prison. The court justified the verdict with the fact that Kim Wan-joong, in order to save money, failed to repair defects in time, and carried out changes in the construction, without investigating possible consequences for the ship's structural stability. The 'Stellar Daisy' was originally built as a supertanker but converted to an ore carrier due to low VLCC rates and new double hull requirements.
Seven people indicted years after ship loss
Seven people have been indicted on ship-burying and other charges recently, about five years after the 'Stellar Daisy' sank on March 31, 2017, in the South Atlantic Ocean and left 22 people unaccounted for, officials said on March 18, 2022. After the sinking, 12 people were indicted in February 2019, but only on charges of violating the Ship Safety Act. Family members of the missing sailors have called for punishing those responsible additionally on ship-burying charges. The seven people, indicted for ship-burying and manslaughter by negligence, included the CEO of the vessel?s operator. Their indictment came ahead of the scheduled expiry of the five-year statute of limitations for the ship-burying charges. Investigations found the vessel was damaged due to persistent operation with cargo overload and a major change made to its bulkhead, but the operator did not inspect or repair the ship, officials said. The vessel was carrying 260,000 tonnes of ore at the time of the accident. The victims' families and civic organizations urged the prosecution to press charges against the operator before the statute of limitations of the case passes on the fifth anniversary of the incident.
Only 7 % could be extracted from retrieved VDR
Data chips from the Voyage Data Recorder which were retrieved from the wreckage of the "Stellar Daisy" in February were surprisingly so broken that only a fraction of the important data could be extracted. It has only been possible to obtain 7 % of the data on the data chips that were inside the VDR box retrieved from the wreck. This meant, among other things, that the communication on the bridge in the last minutes before the ship went down has been lost. The International Stellar Daisy Network required the South Korean government to retrieve the ship's second VDR box from the wreck, located in a water depth of 3,461 meters about 1,800 miles west of Cape Town which would be the only way in which the investigators may come closer to the cause of the sinking in March 2017 that cost 22 crew members their lives. Only two crew members survived. In addition to requiring the Korean government to retrieve the second VDR box from the wreck, they also want the government to investigate why the two data chips in the VDR box have been damaged as they should have been designed to withstand extreme shocks, pressures and heat. The network has previously suggested that the "Ocean Infinity", which picked up the box, did not properly process it in the subsequent process.
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