Shipping executives sentenced to jail time

Shipping executives sentenced to jail time    Four shipping executives — three from Horizon Lines and one from Sea Star Line — were given prison sentences and fined on Tuesday for their roles in what the U.S. Justice Department has described as an antitrust conspiracy involving goods moving between the U.S. mainland and Puerto Rico.
   They were sentenced in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, Fla., on Tuesday for terms ranging from seven to 34 months. Another Sea Star executive was sentenced in January to four years in jail.
   On Tuesday U.S. District Court Justice Timothy Corrigan imposed the sentences, which followed plead agreements that were announced last October:
   ' Gabriel Serra, a former senior vice president at Horizon, was given a sentence of 34 months and a fine of $20,000.
   ' Kevin Gill, also formerly of Horizon, was given a sentence of 29 months and a fine of $20,000.
   ' Former Horizon executive Gregory Globa was given a sentence of 20 months and a fine of $20,000.
   ' Alexander Chisholm, a Sea Star executive, was given a seven-month sentence and fined $4,000 for obstructing the investigation.
   In January, another Sea Star Line executive, Peter Baci, was sentenced to 48 months in jail and fined $20,000 for his part in the price-fixing conspiracy. The Justice Department said it was the longest jail sentence ever imposed for a single antitrust charge. Baci had been senior vice president of yield management and Caribbean services at Sea Star.
   When Baci was sentenced earlier this year, Scott D. Hammond, acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said, “Significant jail time will be a consequence of harming consumers and competition in both the continental United States and Puerto Rico.”
   Sea Star and Horizon Lines, as well as other Jones Act carriers, have been named as defendants in various civil suits filed by shippers.