A US Coast Guard report into the deaths of five people on board the Titan submersible in June 2023 has said there was evidence of “potential criminal offences”.
As a Press Association report in The Irish Times states, the investigation published earlier this week identified eight key causes of the implosion near the wreckage of the Titanic.
These included negligence exhibited by the late Stockton Rush, the chief executive of the tour operator OceanGate Expeditions, it said.
The report said that he could have been accused of “misconduct or neglect of ship officers”, if he had survived the incident.
The four who died along with Mr Rush were French deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, businessman Hamish Harding and father and son Suleman and Shahzada Dawood during the expedition to visit the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland on June 18th, 2023.
The US Coast Guard report said that OceanGate Expeditions “leveraged intimidation tactics ... to evade regulatory scrutiny”.
The report written by lead investigator Thomas Whalen and marine board chairman Jason Neubauer said that in Mr Rush’s case, there was evidence of “potential criminal offences”.
“For several years preceding the incident, OceanGate leveraged intimidation tactics, allowances for scientific operations, and the company’s favourable reputation to evade regulatory scrutiny,” it said.
Read The Irish Times here
