Feds Indict Indian Company and Crewman for Francis Scott Key Bridge Disaster

Unprofessional maintenance on an Indian-manned merchant ship caused the 2024 destruction of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, killed six migrants working on the bridge, and inflicted $5 billion in damages, says a federal investigation and indictment.

A media outlet covering marine issues, GCaptain.com, summarized the charges:

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that Singapore-based Synergy Marine Pte Ltd, Chennai [India]-based Synergy Maritime Pte Ltd, and technical superintendent Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair have been indicted on charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction, false statements, and failing to immediately notify the U.S. Coast Guard of a known hazardous condition aboard the containership Dali.

The accident was caused by the company’s policy of employing a cheap foreign crew who failed to maintain professional standards, according to the federal indictment:

the Dali lost power twice in a four-minute span, as it navigated out to sea from the Port of Baltimore, causing it to crash into the Key Bridge.  The indictment alleges that a loose wire in a high-voltage switchboard likely caused the first power loss. Critical systems on the Dali were originally designed with reliable redundancies and automatic restart capabilities so the Dali could quickly regain power after a blackout. But shortly after the vessel regained power, it lost power again.

According to the indictment, the defendants allegedly altered the ship and relied on a flushing pump to supply fuel to two of the Dali’s four generators. However, the flushing pump was not designed to automatically restart following a blackout, and the Dali’s generators could not operate without a fuel supply, so the ship ultimately experienced a second blackout. The indictment alleges that if the Dali used the proper fuel supply pumps, the vessel would have regained power in time to safely navigate under the Key Bridge.

The indictment also says that the company and crewman tried to hide the unprofessional maintenance from federal inspectors:

Synergy and Nair are also charged with obstruction of an agency proceeding and providing false statements and documents to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) as it conducted a casualty investigation. The obstruction charges relate to, among other things, Nair’s statements to the NTSB that he did not know the Dali was using the flushing pump to provide fuel to two of the generators.

“The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was a preventable tragedy of enormous consequence,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “This indictment is a critical step toward holding accountable those whose reckless disregard … caused this disaster.”

The avoidable disaster spotlights the federal government’s policy of allowing U.S. and foreign companies to hire cheap foreign workers for jobs in critical nodes of the nation’s economy. For example, many American professionals have been sidelined because companies can spike their stock values by importing migrants — usually via the H-1B and other visa programs — for jobs in the nation’s critical infrastructure.