Press Release – Appeal Court confirms prison sentence for Norwegian ship owner
The Gulating Lagmannsrett, an Appeal Court in the Norwegian city of Bergen, has confirmed the prison sentence for Norwegian ship owner Georg Eide for aiding and abetting the attempt to export the ship Tide Carrier, aka Eide Carrier and Harrier, to Pakistan for scrapping [1].
Back in November 2020, the First Instance Sunnhordland District Court in Norway had sentenced Mr Eide to six months unconditional imprisonment for having assisted scrap dealer Wirana in an attempt to illegally export the Tide Carrier to the shipbreaking beach of Gadani. The Court had also ordered the confiscation of criminal dividends of NOK 2 million from Eide Marine Eidendom AS.
Now, almost a year and a half later, Mr Eide, who had decided to appeal the first verdict, sees his prison sentence confirmed. As reported by ShippingWatch, the Court concluded, in line with the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime's (Økokrim), that the ship owner was aware that the Tide Carrier’s buyer was intending to scrap the vessel in South Asia, in violation of national and European waste rules. According to the Appeal Court, having sold the vessel to a middle man and not directly to a beaching yard does not provide for exempting the ship owner from being held liable for having committed an environmental crime.
Transboundary movements of hazardous wastes are strictly regulated by Norwegian, European and international laws. Illegal trade of toxic end-of-life ships are increasingly being investigated by enforcement authorities in several EU Member States, which have the obligation to prevent the export of hazardous wastes to non-OECD countries. Upholding the principles and rules set in the Basel Convention and EU waste legislation, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform expects that more ship owners and intermediaries will be held accountable for the exploitation of vulnerable communities and the environment on the shipbreaking beaches of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and call upon the shipping industry to conduct human rights due diligence when managing their end-of-life fleet.
NOTE
[1] For more details on the case, see The controversial case of the Harrier.

- Gadani #shipbreaking workers demand: ✍️an increase the basic wages of all workers by 50pc; ✍️registration with soc… https://t.co/SXbjgjiWHf4 days ago
- RT @odmanasli: This is how a ship w. asbestos is NOW being dismantled in #Aliağa/TR Shiprecycling Area #KılıçlarShipyard, with workers from…8 days ago
- Grateful for the opportunity to present the advocacy work of the @NGOShipbreaking and the future vision for a gree… https://t.co/mRNjpLNQXs10 days ago
- RT @odmanasli: Another fatal workplace 'accident' in a EU-certified shoprecycling yard in #Aliağa #Turkey. Reasons of the so-called acciden…17 days ago
Related news

Platform publishes South Asia Quarterly Update #17
There were a total of 113 ships broken in the third quarter of 2018. Of these, 79 ships were sold to the beaches of South Asia for… Read More

Where ships go to die – Winner of the Public Eye Investigation Award
Decommissioned deep-sea vessels are floating toxic waste. Their disposal is laborious and costly, and regarded as a menace by those who want to protect both the workers… Read More

Platform News – ‘With Bare Hands’: an immersive journey into the problems of shipbreaking
International media outlets publish ‘With bare hands’, the first multimedia and data-driven reporting project that documents the negative impacts on the environment and the human costs of… Read More

Platform News – Shipping industry presses to undermine European Ship Recycling Regulation
On Monday, the EU member states’ experts on ship recycling met in Brussels to discuss the latest developments, six months ahead of the application of the 2013… Read More

Platform publishes South Asia Quarterly Update #28
Eleven workers suffered an accident on South Asian beaches in the fourth quarter of 2021.
... Read More
Platform publishes South Asia Quarterly Update #8
The NGO Shipbreaking Platform publishes today the eighth South Asia Quarterly Update, a briefing paper in which it informs about the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh, India and… Read More

Platform publishes South Asia Quarterly Update #19
There were a total of 193 ships broken in the second quarter of 2019. Of these, 146 ships were sold to the infamous scrapping beaches of South… Read More

Platform News – The new lobbyist of beaching, Maersk, ignores concerns of environmental and human rights experts
When Maersk decided earlier this year to sell two end-of-life ships to beaching yards in Alang, India, a broad coalition of European environmental and human rights NGOs… Read More