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Eleven years after the Prestige oil tanker spilled its cargo across the Iberian Peninsula - the worst ecological disaster to strike the region - the trial against the captain and crew has ended without anyone being held to account for the environmental damage, writes La Voz de Galicia.
The Greek-operated tanker, which was registered in the Bahamas, was transporting 77,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil when it sank off the Galician coast on November 13, 2002, after its hull split open. The resulting spill polluted around 2,000km of beaches.
At the conclusion of a trial on November 13, the court issued a nine-month suspended sentence to the captain of the tanker for disobeying Spanish authorities, who instructed him to move away from the coast, but acquitted him, along with the ship’s chief mechanic and the head of the Spanish merchant navy, on charges of damaging the environment.
As to the amount of compensation for damages, which were estimated by the prosecution to amount to €4.32bn, the court ruled that €151m should be paid by the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds. The Spanish state, and its ultimate authority, who at the time was Mariano Rajoy (the current prime minister), was exonerated from all responsibility for the catastrophe.
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