Jail for Engineer in Singapore Bunker Theft Case

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Thursday April 17, 2014

A Singapore court on Thursday sentenced a marine engineer to 18 months in jail for misappropriating 200 tonnes of fuel from his ship, Channel News Asia reports.

Pittis Stavros was convicted last week of taking part in a buy-back scheme in which only 300 tonnes of fuel, rather than the 500 tonnes that had been promised, were delivered to the MV Sakura Princess, where he was the chief engineer.

Stavros and two others involved in the scheme, a bunker clerk and an independent marine surveyor, then sold the remaining fuel back to the fuel supplier.

The stolen fuel was worth more than S$153,000 ($122,00).

Prosecutor Sanjiv Vaswani had argued for a longer jail term of 28 months, saying it is in the public interest to deter bunkering offenses in Singapore, which is the world's top bunkering port.

Defence lawyer Shashi Nathan argued that Stavros did not benefit from the wrongdoing and that S$30,300 ($24,200) that he was said to have received had not been found.

The defence indicated that it will appeal both the conviction and sentence.

Singapore has been cracking down on bunkering fraud as it seeks to avoid developing a bad reputation among shippers.