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X-Press Pearl disaster: Lanka faces risk of losing US$ 3b in compensation
View(s):- MEPA censured for not meeting deadlines and dealing with Australian consultant
By Ranjith Padmasiri and Damith Wickramasekara
The Attorney General’s (AG) Department and the Justice Ministry have directed the Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) to submit within three weeks the final report compiled by an expert team detailing the environmental damage caused by the X-Press Pearl disaster as the country faces the risk of losing 3 billion US dollars in compensation.
In Parliament this week, Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe chaired a meeting attended by representatives of the Justice Ministry, the AG’s Department and MEPA to discuss legal options in relation to the X-Press Pearl disaster. Urban Development and Housing State Minister Arundika Fernando was also present as MEPA now comes under his purview.
Minister Rajapakshe said the AG’s Department needed the report within the next two to three weeks if it were to file action in a foreign jurisdiction over Sri Lanka’s worst maritime disaster.
MEPA had earlier agreed to hand the report over to the Justice Ministry by September 19 but had missed this deadline. During the meeting held in Parliament, MEPA officials said they could hand over the report by mid-January.
Minister Rajapakshe told the Sunday Times that the AG needed the report sooner as continued delays in filing action would see Sri Lanka falling short of the statute of limitations in a foreign legal system.
A statute of limitations sets the maximum amount of time that parties involved in a dispute have to initiate legal proceedings from the date of an alleged offence, whether civil or criminal. As such, instructions were issued to hand over the report within three weeks.
The Justice Minister also expressed annoyance that MEPA had sent the final report to an Australian firm hired as a legal consultant first without sending it to the Justice Ministry.
“The report should have come to the Justice Ministry first. It is then forwarded to the AG’s Department. That is the process. The move to first send the report to a foreign legal firm and ask for recommendations is highly suspicious and gives rise to claims that this is a deliberate delaying tactic,” the minister claimed.
Delays in filing legal action could see Sri Lanka lose out on an opportunity to claim compensation amounting to USD 3 billion, he claimed.
MEPA Chairperson Dharshani Lahandapura said the report submitted to the Australian legal consultant detailed environmental damage that had occurred up to August this year due to the sinking of the Singapore-flagged vessel. “Much of the debris continues to remain under the sea. Salvage operations are ongoing to remove the wreckage and it is our assessment that we cannot submit a final report on the damage until the wreck is completely removed,” she said.
As such, the report submitted to the AG would be an assessment of the damage reported up until the point where the report was compiled, she noted.
She added that expediting a criminal case against those responsible for negligence would be more advantageous when filing a civil action. The AG has now indicted eight accused including the ship’s Russian Captain and the local agent of the vessel in the Colombo High Court over marine pollution caused by the disaster.
The Cabinet Office had asked MEPA to submit observations regarding a Cabinet paper submitted by the Justice Ministry on filing legal action on the X-Press Pearl disaster, she added.
MEPA’s observations were that the Marine Pollution Prevention Act has enough provisions to initiate legal proceedings. It is extremely costly, though, to file legal action in Singapore. Given the prevailing economic crisis, it creates an additional burden on Sri Lanka. As such, MEPA submitted an opinion that it would be more advantageous to file legal action in local courts, she said.
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