Carnival Cruise Lines Hit with $20M Penalty for Environmental Crimes

The cruise line giant Carnival Corporation and its Princess subsidiary have agreed to pay a criminal penalty of $20 million for environmental violations such as dumping plastic waste into the ocean. The company also admitted sending teams to visit ships before the inspections to fix any environmental compliance violations, falsifying training records and contacting the U.S. Coast Guard to try to redefine what would be a “major non-conformity” of their environmental compliance plan. Part of the 2016 plea agreement required ships from eight of Carnival’s companies to submit to court-supervised monitoring, which is how the most recent violations were discovered.

Source: www.npr.org