I’m a lowly 25 Ton master, Great Lakes, but my day job occasionally involves foreign commerce. This article came across in a newsletter for lawyers, but mentions the Department of Justice deciding to not enforce an otherwise questionable payment because the ship may have inadvertently strayed off course and the Master could have had health problems if incarcerated. https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/page/file/1466596/download
Not familiar with the Corrupt Practices Act but this:
I didn’t read the whole thing but the original issue seems to be that the captain was following the instructions of agent as to where to anchor rather then study the regulations himself.
I’ve run into the same problem. When the ship is jumping from trade to trade there’s simply not time take a deep dive into the regulations at each port.
Practically speaking the captain has to rely upon the agent for guidance in an unfamiliar port yet the captain is sometimes held responsible.
As my introduction pointed out, I’m not a full time Captain, my endorsement is for little boats, and the closest foreign country my voyages reach is about 40 NM from Canada .
My “day job” is as a lawyer. So my post was not a comment on the navigational steps, but the payment. A US person could get charged for bribery, but in this case, there was not a provable crime because the payment was “without corrupt intent.” Whether it was or was not a legitimate claim of a criminal violation of navigational rules, under these facts, making the payment was found by the US Justice Department to be not illegal. And “not illegal” does not necessarily mean “legal enough to make a regular practice” but good enough under these facts. I brought it up here because of the unique set of facts involving a Captain.
Its common practice to pay a local ‘agent’ and turn a blind eye to what the agent does with his fee. In fact, there is an agent who is advertising on this very forum that he can help you jump the que for the Panama Canal.