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Editorials
These are the responsibility of the editor and convey the newspaper's view on current affairs-both domestic and international

Slick legal maneuvering

It is unclear whether the Prestige trial will establish who is guilty of a heinous environmental crime

In striking contrast with the single year that an Italian court has required to address the Costa Concordia shipwreck, an entire decade had to pass before the trial over the spillage of 64,000 metric tons of fuel oil from the tanker Prestige off the coast of Galicia could begin. The incident caused an oil slick that contaminated the shoreline from the mouth of the Miño river in Galicia to the Atlantic coast of France.

The local court in the Galician town of Corcubión found itself faced with the sinking of an oil tanker operating under the flag of the Bahamas, with Liberian owners and operators (Mare Shipping, Universe Maritime), a British insurer (The London Steamship Owners), a US certificate (ABS), and chartered by a Swiss company (Crown Resources). The tangle of interests and countries involved, the changes of investigating judge (no less than five in succession), and the delay in creating an environmental prosecutor’s office (four years after the catastrophe) have combined to slow proceedings involving 230,000 pages of evidence and 1,500 injured parties.

Quite apart from the question of political responsibility for what happened, the trial that began in A Coruña on Tuesday will have to determine what part of the blame to attach to the decision to tow the ancient tanker away from the coast during a storm — a decision made in the Public Works Ministry, then headed by Francisco Álvarez Cascos — instead of towing it to harbor, where it would have been easier to control the spill. Another key point is the condition of the ship, and more so, now that it is known that the Aznar government failed to submit to the court the results of an underwater investigation made at the time.

The High Court must act with all possible firmness. There are reasonable doubts about the decisions made by the government at the time; but in any event, someone must be found to be responsible for the crime committed against the environment and for the economic damages caused to thousands of people. The question is, who is going to pay for them?

Legal maze

In France, the sinking of the tanker Erika led to a sanction against the oil company Total for imprudence after it was shown to have pressed to hasten the transport of crude oil in disregard of unsafe conditions. No such clear juridical entity is apparent in the maze wrapped around the responsibility for the Prestige, where there also exists the precedent that ABS, the only firm considered solvent, has been relieved in the United States of the liability that was demanded of it by the Spanish state. It is the state, too, which is now demanding 4.328 billion euros in the trial in A Coruña, and risks having to pay a large part of this, if it is adjudged to bear civil liability by association.

Those who arrange for the transportation of any cargo by ship — particularly an environmentally dangerous one — must be responsible for the seaworthiness of the vessel that is to carry it. It remains to be seen if Spanish justice, hindered by the court’s tortuous preparatory phase, will be capable of unraveling the tangle of who is responsible for the Prestige catastrophe.

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