A U.S. District Court in Maryland on Friday sentenced Istanbul-based ship management company Ciner Gemi Acente İşletme ve Ticket A.Ş. to pay $1,050,000 after pleading guilty for routinely discharging oily waste-water into the sea from its carrier ship M\V Artvin without proper disposal equipment.

Ciner Gemi is a subsidiary of Ciner Holding, a huge Turkish conglomerate that owns a variety of companies including a newspaper and various TV stations.

Ciner last year operated the M/V Artvin, a 44-ton carrier ship that transported cargo to the Port of Baltimore, MD. Oily water and sludge was routinely discharged from the ship into the sea and the crew intentionally covered up the illegal practice by falsifying the oil record book between March 2014 and November 2014.

The U.S. Department of Justice said that John C. Malaki, the chief engineer of the vessel, also pleaded guilty for failing to maintain a proper oil record book and was sentenced to 6 months supervised probation along with a $ 1, 050,000 fine. The court also sentenced a second engineer, Ulyses A. Atabay to a year of unsupervised probation because he ordered the crew not to use the ship's oil-water separator as required by law.

Ciner will pay some of his penalty, about $ 1, 050,000, in the form an organizational community service payment to the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation to be used for funding projects aimed at the restoration of marine and aquatic resources in the District of Maryland, the Justice Department said.

The ship management company, under the watch of an independent monitor, will also implement an environmental compliance plan and train its employees and ship crews to prevent maritime pollution.

Ciner Gemi Acente İşletme ve Ticaret A.Ş. established in 2010 and employed at least 12 people in 2012, according to the company's official website.