Carnival Corporation has apparently reached an agreement with U.S. federal prosecutors as it seeks to avoid revocation of its probation on an environmental case from 2016, according to a source close to the investigation.
While no specifics are known at this time, the deal was made three weeks after U.S. Federal Judge Patricia Seitz threatened to revoke the company's probation in a 2016 criminal environmental pollution case involving Princess Cruises.
For the past two years, all ships from all of Carnival Corp.'s brands have been following a court-supervised, five-year environmental compliance program. The company had also, as part of that earlier case, paid a $40 million fine.
But when serious probation violations came to light this year, Judge Seitz was visibly upset and had threatened to block Carnival Corporation’s ships from arriving in U.S. ports.
Judge Seitz had previously set a June 3 court date and ordered all members of the cruise company’s executive committee to appear, including Micky Arison, chairman of the board, as well as Arnold Donald, the company’s president and CEO.
Now, at that court date, it will be Seitz’s decision to either accept or reject the company’s plea deal with prosecutors.
Initially, when the environmental violations came to light, Carnival said: “We have been taking steps to address the improvement areas mentioned in the report, and to build on the positive progress noted by the court-appointed monitor to make sure we are in full compliance moving forward.”
The subsequent alleged violations came to light in March when the court-ordered probation officer provided examples to Seitz about how the company had violated its probation.
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