Madrid – The Spanish Supreme Court said on Tuesday it had found the captain,
British insurer and owner of an oil tanker that broke up off
northwestern Spain in 2002 liable for one of Europe’s worst
environmental disasters.

Reversing an earlier decision acquitting
the ship’s captain, Apostolos Mangouras, the court sentenced the skipper
to two years’ jail and also found a mutual insurance company The London
PI Club liable for the disaster, as well as ship owner Mare
Shipping.

The Prestige tanker ran into trouble in rough seas in November 2002.

Six days later, damaged and adrift, it broke in two and sank off the coast of Galicia.

The
accident saw 63 000 tons of oil spill into the sea and blacken 2 980km of shoreline in Spain, France and Portugal with
sludge.

The spill caused huge damage to wildlife and the
environment, as well as to the region’s fishing industry, polluting more
than a thousand beaches and leading to an international clean-up effort.

A
Spanish court in 2013 acquitted Mangouras and the ship’s chief
engineer, both of them Greek, as well as a senior Spanish official, of
environmental crimes over the wreck, arguing they did not act
intentionally or with serious negligence.

But the Supreme Court
revoked the acquittal for Mangouras, accusing him of “gross negligence”
for having sailed at a time when bad weather was possible, knowing that
the ship was old and that the automatic pilot no longer worked, for
instance.

The London PI Club, meanwhile, could be liable for
up to $1bn, though no sum has yet been
decided.

The 2013 acquittal of the captain had caused an uproar.

Notoriously wrong

Greenpeace had said that the decision provided “a carte blanche to the oil industry to threaten the environment and citizens”.

And
Spain’s State Prosecutor Luis Navajas, who asked the Supreme Court to
overturn the acquittal in September, called the decision “flawed” and
“notoriously wrong.”

“The prestige of Spain as a state that
defends its coasts and its economic wealth was called into question by
this decision,” he argued.

Among the evidence he said had been
overlooked were notes from the Prestige’s former captain, Stratos
Kostazos, who had complained that the tanker was in bad shape and who
had refused to sail in it.

The Supreme Court said on Tuesday that two
major energy companies – Spain’s Repsol and Britain’s BP – had
advised against using the Prestige tanker, a 16-year-old vessel with a
carrying capacity of 81 000 tonnes.

Mangouras’ seamanship was not
only dangerous, “he also created a serious risk, particularly with
regards to the highly-polluting nature of the substance he was
transporting,” it concluded.