By akademiotoelektronik, 30/11/2022

After the unblocking of the Suez Canal, time for reckoning

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It took six days to free the Suez Canal, which was blocked by the giant container ship Ever Given. This is nothing compared to the battle that begins now and is likely to last for years: to identify who will have to pay the bill for this high-profile accident, with profound economic repercussions for hundreds of actors.

The first, financial act of this maritime soap opera from the beginning of the year began on Wednesday March 31, when divers began to inspect the hull of the huge 400-meter-long ship. They are trying to establish whether the container ship – which suffered no significant damage in the accident – ​​was seaworthy.

Find a manager

At the same time, investigators began questioning the crew in an attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events and decisions that led the Ever Given to become stuck across the Suez Canal. "The boat will remain in the Bitter Lakes area [two canal lakes near the town of Fayid, editor's note] until the investigation is completed," said Osama Rabie, director of the Canal Authority. de Suez (SCA - Suez Canal Authority), without giving details on the possible duration of this stage.

It can take time. The German company which hired the technical crew sent its experts, Panama where the boat is registered did the same, as did the Shoei Kisen Kaisha group, which is the Japanese owner of the container ship, not to mention the Egyptian authorities .

The conclusions of these investigations – which will not necessarily all go in the same direction – should make it possible to determine the responsibilities in this maritime and commercial fiasco, and therefore indicate to whom to turn to demand reimbursement of any damage or economic losses.

In theory, the captain, appointed by the owner of the boat, is responsible for any navigation error. But the Suez Canal is a special case: "Navigation is not free there, and the port authority assigns pilots to each boat that crosses the canal", underlines a French lawyer specializing in maritime law and insurance who preferred to remain anonymous, contacted by France 24.

And that's where the Suez Canal Authority's thick manual of navigation rules comes in. He does everything to minimize the risk that the pilots – who depend on the SCA – are blamed for navigation problems. The operator of the boat, the Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha, is presumed responsible unless it can prove that the accident is linked to an external event.

That is why the German group, which hired the crew, suggests that it was the fault of the wind. “If it was blowing too hard, the pilots who were supposed to be able to assess the risk should have prevented the container ship from using the channel”, underlines Sal Mercogliano, specialist in maritime history at the University of Campbell (North Carolina) , interviewed by the Guardian. A hypothesis that displeases the canal authorities. Osama Rabie, the director of the SCA dismissed it, believing that “there could have been technical or human errors”.

A bill of several hundred million dollars

If the battle to designate the person responsible for the accident promises to be so tight, it is because the bill may “amount to at least several hundred million dollars”, estimates the New York Times. Compensation and reparations can be divided into five categories, according to James Davey, a specialist in maritime law at the University of Southampton, interviewed by the Guardian: damage to the cargo of the Ever Given, the cost of salvaging the carrier -containers, the damage done to the canal itself, the financial losses recorded by the Suez Canal Authority and the losses due to delivery delays for all other container ships which have been blocked at the entrance to this artery maritime the time of the rescue of the boat.

The Suez Canal Authority is beginning to elaborate on how financially painful this whole affair was. It lost about $90 million in uncollected customs duties due to the blockage of traffic, and "although calculations are still in progress, estimates of total losses should exceed $1 billion," said Osama Rabie, without, however, specifying how he arrived at such a sum.

The heart of the legal and financial imbroglio that must send shivers down the spine of insurers concerns the cargo of all these boats. The Ever Given alone carried 20,000 containers in which were all kinds of goods, perishable or not, ranging from livestock to laptops to sneakers. The hundred or so companies that had entrusted their products to Shoei Kisen Kaisha “risk having to pay their customers for the delay or the loss of the goods in the event of expired goods”, underlines the American economic information channel Bloomberg. They will probably seek reimbursement. Just like the companies that had entrusted their exports to the other boats that were delayed because of the Ever Given.

But that's where the problem lies. “There is a principle in maritime law according to which the carrier cannot be held responsible for delays, unless there is a contrary clause in the contract”, notes the lawyer contacted by France 24. And “each cargo can be governed by a contract of “different insurance, which makes this case a kind of legal armageddon,” said Chris Grieveson, an American specialist in maritime law, interviewed by Bloomberg.

The setbacks of the Ever Given will mobilize lawyers for carriers, insurers, reinsurers “from Japan to London [where one of the main maritime insurance consortia is located] for years for what promises to be one of the longest and most costly legal saga in recent maritime history,” concludes the New York Times.

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