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Breach of protocol claimed over crew’s entry to Saipan
CNMI Customs Services Division director Joe Mafnas raised concern over what he described as a “breach of protocol” when the 17-person crew of the grounded cargo vessel Paul Russ were allowed entry into Saipan last week without going through mandatory customs inspections and without filling out local customs form.
“When a decision was made to take the crew off the ship, CNMI Customs should have been contacted. …Part of the CNMI Customs responsibility by law is to clear all passengers, crew, cargo disembarking from ports if they are from outside the CNMI. In the case of the Paul Russ crew, 17 of them, the shipping agent didn’t notify us that the crew will be disembarking from the grounded ship so we can be there to process them. That was only around 5:30pm Thursday,” Mafnas told Saipan Tribune.
The Customs director said the division only learned about the vessel crew’s disembarkation after the fact.
“The shipping agent should have let us known. As the local customs agency, we’re responsible for customs inspections, to help make sure no contraband gets in,” Mafnas said.
The shipping agent, it was later known, is CTSI.
Mafnas and a CTSI official separately confirmed a meeting today to discuss the incident.
On Thursday night, the U.S Coast Guard, the CNMI Homeland Security and Emergency Management Office, and other entities successfully pulled out Paul Russ from the reef, two days after it was grounded. Unexploded ordnance, believed to be remnants from World War II, were also found behind and next to the grounded vessel.
