“The Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division and Coast Guard Investigative Services are present aboard the Maersk Saltoro conducting court authorized law enforcement activity,” statements from both the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office said Saturday morning.
Authorities did not offer further specifics. The Washington Post first reported on federal authorities boarding the ship.
The raid came several months after investigators conducted a similar search of the Dali, the cargo ship that crashed into the bridge.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department alleged that Dali owner Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and manager Synergy Marine, both of Singapore, recklessly cut corners and ignored known electrical problems on the vessel, which lost power multiple times minutes before it crashed into a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.
The Justice Department said mechanical and electrical systems on the massive ship had been “jury-rigged” and improperly maintained, culminating in the power outages and a cascade of other failures that left its pilots and crew helpless in the face of looming disaster. The ship was leaving Baltimore for Sri Lanka when its steering failed because of the power loss.
Six members of a road work crew were killed when the bridge crumbled into the water. The collapse also snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully reopened in June.
The Justice Department is seeking to recover more than $100 million the government spent to clear the underwater debris and reopen the city’s port.
The companies filed a court petition days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability in what could become the most expensive marine casualty case in history. Justice Department officials said there is no legal support for that bid to limit liability and pledged to vigorously contest it.
In its lawsuit, which also seeks punitive damages, the Justice Department argued that vessel owners and operators need to be “deterred from engaging in such reckless and exceedingly harmful behavior.”
That includes Grace Ocean and Synergy themselves because the Dali has a “sister ship,” authorities wrote in the claim.
The two companies “need to be deterred because they continue to operate their vessels, including a sister ship to the Dali, in U.S. waters and benefit economically from those activities,” the lawsuit says.
Darrell Wilson, a Grace Ocean spokesperson, confirmed that the FBI and Coast Guard boarded the Maersk Saltoro in the Port of Baltimore on Saturday morning. Wilson has previously said the owner and manager “look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”
Like the Dali, the Singapore-flagged Saltoro was built by Hyundai in 2015.
According to the Justice Department lawsuit, major issues with the Dali’s electrical system may have resulted from excessive vibrations on the ship that can loosen wires and damage connections. A prior captain of the vessel had reported “heavy vibration” in his handover notes in May 2023, saying he had made similar reports to Synergy in the past, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit noted cracked equipment in the engine room and pieces of cargo shaken loose. The ship’s electrical equipment was in such bad condition that an independent agency stopped further electrical testing because of safety concerns, according to the lawsuit.
The ship had also experienced power outages while it was still docked in Baltimore. Those blackouts are considered “reportable marine casualties” that must be reported to the U.S. Coast Guard, which authorities say never happened.
The Dali, which was stuck amid the wreckage of the collapse for months before it could be extricated and refloated, departed Norfolk, Virginia, on Thursday afternoon enroute to China on its first international voyage since the March 26 disaster.
Justice Department officials refused to answer questions Wednesday about whether a criminal investigation into the bridge collapse remains ongoing. FBI agents boarded the Dali in April.
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Mattise reported from Nashville, Tennessee.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP