An arrest warrant has been issued for the Crystal Symphony due to unpaid fuel bills. This means that authorities will take custody of the ship.
Now passenger and crew have been on board for a day after the ship changed course and avoided docking in Miami where it might have faced the U.S. marshal. The ship instead sailed to Bimini and avoided disembarkation in the scheduled port. According to Cruise Mapper, the cruise ship’s round trip which commenced on Jan. 8 was to end in Miami on Saturday.
The cruise ship which flies the Bahamas flag is owned by Genting Group. The ship is being pursued by Peninsula Petroleum Far East in order to recover $4.6 million from Star Cruises as well as the Crystal Cruises. The oil company is seeking an excess of $1.2 million from Crystal Symphony vessel.
Passengers were expected to alight at Bimini after the ship clears customs. According to USA Today, these problems facing the cruise ship might have been due to the collapse of the parent company Genting Hong Kong.
After this incident the ship will remain with a skeleton crew to run its operations.
Peninsula Petroleum Far East filed a court case against the ship, Crystal Cruises and Star Cruises (HK) Limited and made a complaint on Wednesday and requested for an arrest warrant. The warrant was approved by a judge of the U.S District Court in Southern Florida.
The ship was facing arrest on Saturday according to a lawyer representing Paninsula Petroleum Far East.
“The U.S. marshal will be there with the arrest warrant if the ship shows up in Miami,” Simms told Bloomberg. “My good money is that it’s not landing in Miami, from what we’ve been told. Our client is determined to recover.”
The lawyer further added that the petroleum company is seeking for the sale of the cruise ship in order to recover the money.
Despite the fears that the crew may not be paid, they have been good to the passengers feeding and entertaining them.
“I’m standing on the top deck of the ship, deck 12 looking down over the swimming pool and the hot tub,” Pace said. “And I’m seeing people lounging around, passengers just chilling, reading books and just going with the flow,” said pace.
“We had to change flights which actually wasn’t too bad, and we will be a day late home which, again, is not the end of the world for us,” one of the passengers on the cruise ship said after learning that they will dock in Bahamas instead of Miami.
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