AsiaDry CargoOperations

Arrest warrants sought for Polaris and KR officials over Stellar Daisy sinking

Nearly 22 months after the tragic sinking of the Stellar Daisy VLOC arrest warrants have been sought by the Busan Coast Guard for Kim Wan-joong, the CEO and chairman of the ship’s owner, Polaris Shipping, as well as four other men who are accused of allowing the converted ship to travel in unsafe conditions.

Polaris’s former head of maritime affairs also faces being arrested over the sinking, which killed 22 crew in the South Atlantic as does an inspector from class society, Korean Register. Two other men who worked for a private survey firm are also likely to be arrested tomorrow.

The charges relate to the modification of the vessel, an inspection from KR and a forged document by a technician working for a local thickness measurement company.

Criminal charges including involuntary manslaughter will be investigated again after the completion this month of the deepsea search to be conducted by Ocean Infinity for the ship and its vessel data recorder.

Sam Chambers

Starting out with the Informa Group in 2000 in Hong Kong, Sam Chambers became editor of Maritime Asia magazine as well as East Asia Editor for the world’s oldest newspaper, Lloyd’s List. In 2005 he pursued a freelance career and wrote for a variety of titles including taking on the role of Asia Editor at Seatrade magazine and China correspondent for Supply Chain Asia. His work has also appeared in The Economist, The New York Times, The Sunday Times and The International Herald Tribune.

Comments

  1. YES. Long overdue. This is amazingly good news that seafarers are not criminalized in this one. And I am going to go there…? Is it that no pollution had taken place, is it because it was that particular location and no politics got involved, or because they are all dead, except for 2?

  2. After some incidents at sea happened, usually the corrective actions are taken such as create new specialized courses for mariners to avoid recurrence of those incidents, without whom, they are prevented from legally work on its ranks.
    When design engineers and marine architects will be obliged to follow specialized courses at faculties for re-visiting criteria and technical studies for transformations such as those of STELLAR series VLOC?

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