Two German shipping companies have been sentenced to pay $1.5 million after pleading guilty to charges arising from use of a “magic pipe” to illegally dump oily bilge water from the general cargo ship BBC Magellan.

The ship’s owners, Briese Schiffahrts GmbH & Co. KG and Briese Schiffahrts GmbH & Co. KG MS Extum, pleaded guilty to failure to maintain an accurate oil record book and to tampering with witnesses by persuading them to provide false statements to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The two companies were sentenced to pay a total of $1.25 million in fines and a $250,000 community service payment to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to fund environmental projects in the Gulf of Mexico. The BBC Magellan has also been banned from doing business in the U.S. for the next five years.

The Justice Department said the Coast Guard discovered an improperly attached rubber hose during a March 2015 inspection at the Port of Pensacola, Florida. Investigators later determined that the crew had used the so-called “magic pipe” to dump untreated oily water from the ship’s bilge.

The crew also failed to make the required entries in the vessel’s oil record book, and the vessel’s chief engineer instructed crew members to lie to the Coast Guard about the incident, the Justice Department said.

The incident is the latest in a long series during the last several years involving illegal discharge of oily-water ballast.

In a separate case involving an illegal discharge of oily bilge water from the bulk carrier Trident Navigator, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this month overturned the conviction of chief engineer Matthaios Fafalios for failing to maintain an accurate log book.

The charge was one of three for which Fafalios was convicted in 2014. The 5th Circuit agreed with his argument that prosecutors had not shown he was the vessel’s master, and that under U.S. regulations, only the master or “other person having charge of the ship” is required to keep the vessel’s oil record book.

Previous：Bollore revenue slips on weak oil prices    Next：DP World Nhava Sheva handles JNPT's largest ship to date