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Comment by Chardok | Hacker News Reader

"Miami-based Carnival pleaded guilty Monday to six probation violations, including the dumping of plastic mixed with food waste in Bahamian waters. 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."

So not only did they knowingly dump plastic waste into the ocean, but they also actively tried to cover it up, implying they were fully aware of being guilty. And they get a paltry fine with no one going to jail for this criminal charge?

At this point the judge is just as guilty for allowing this behavior to continue.

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"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."

Unreal - I couldn't imagine being on those "teams"... your task for the day/week is literally to commit fraud. Wow.

Sending teams to fix problems ahead of inspectors is a strange charge, I wish they provided more detail on that. Self policing and fixing problems is exactly what corporate should have been doing.

This sounds like they only did the self policing ahead of inspection, and as soon as it passed it was business as usual, which is not how a company should behave.

This is how literally every "inspection" of everything ever works at scale.

"Oh, the X department has a review coming up, better send the X review prep team to make sure X is Xing like they should and light a fire under their ass to fix it if not".

Sure X is supposed to be ensuring compliance continuously but we all know where that falls on the priority list so hence things only ever get fixed in the pre-inspection inspection.

Edit: Yes I know they falsified records. I'm talking about the general case here.

Except they were also falsifying training records.

To be fair random inspection is the only (albeit imperfect) way to work. If you give notice you are easy to game.

That said I remember teachers doing lessons specifically because an unplanned school inspection was happening. Some things can still be gamed. Perhaps the only option is find a way to measure continuously if at all possible, and make sure the risks are high enough to not be worth taking...

What else? Probably make it financially better to go above and beyond environmentally? So it's not a cost centre.

No one goes to jail because we're talking about littering. It's just not a big enough deal. Given the severity of the underlying crime, a $20M fine is massive.

Covering up environmental compliance violations and falsifying training records is a much bigger deal than littering. This is more akin the Volkswagen emissions scandal.

Elizabeth Warren's proposal to prosecute CEOs for corporate misconduct would be put to good use here. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/3/18294308/el...

The falsifying seems to be isolated incidents on two cruise ships. It is relegated to a third bullet among “other conduct” in the DOJ press release: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/princess-cruise-lines-and-its....

So they falsified records with intent to deceive law enforcement twice? Seems pretty bad.

“They” is random employees on two ships.

Is the company not responsible for the actions of its employees? If so, are the responsible employees going to jail?

There is no evidence that the company itself knew about or encouraged that falsification. If there was, the DOJ press release would have mentioned it. The employees could be prosecuted, but federal prosecutors generally don’t go after such low level conduct.

And once again, serious crimes are committed and nobody suffers any serious consequences.

I’m also curious, what is “the company itself” other than its employees? What part of a company is capable of knowing things besides the people in it?

The obvious distinctions would be between management and line/staff workers, between executive management and line management, and between executive management and the board.

The typical implication of "the company" "knowing" things would be executive management (and, if the conduct actually involved executive managers, the board).

>Covering up environmental compliance violations and falsifying training records is a much bigger deal than littering.

So it's not the littering/pollution that's the important crime, it's daring to lie to the government that's the important crime?

Yes, littering is bad and the fine is too small for a company this size but the fact that people see failing to <cartman>"respect my authority"</cartman> as the true crime here does not sit well with me.

Probably not; the threshold you have to cross under Warren's hypothetical proposal is, while lower than the current one, still pretty high, and weirdly specific: Carnival would essentially have to already be operating under a judgement or consent decree covering this conduct, and a specific executive officer would have to do something meeting the four tests for legal negligence that either violated the judgement they were under, or otherwise resulted in harm the health or privacy of at least 3.3 million people.

Warren did not propose the "CEOs of companies we dislike can be sent to prison if anything bad happens" bill.

A high bar sounds fine to me.

It’s a bit more than just “littering”..

And $20M might be massive to you, but it’s a drop in the bucket for Carnival. It allows them to incorporate these practices into their business model, as long as they’re kept beneath their economic threshold.

$20M is .106% of Carnival's 2018 revenue and .047% of their assets. It's also only 1.5yrs worth of CEO compensation.

Definitely not "massive" for Carnival's scale if their company is operating in the $billions.

A $500 littering fine for the average person making $50k/yr is 10x more of a hit than what Carnival was slapped with for dumping magnitudes greater of trash into the ocean knowingly.

Plus someone is going to have to deal with fixing Carnival's mess. All Carnival had to do was write a check and send out a memo saying "Try harder to not get caught next time guys".

$20m is probably less than their annual toilet-paper budget.

People need to wake up to the fact that "littering" is no longer a minor crime in the world we live in. I see it as tantamount to murder, given the environmental damage it causes.

Have you seen the Bahamas lately?

Between the cruise ships and massive resorts they have killed the entire ecosystem.

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