U.S. Coast Guard vs. Arne Gunnar Svendsen: 3 Month MMC Suspension For Mariner Convicted of “Assault with Deadly Weapon on Sheriff’s Deputy,” “Sexual Battery,” & “Two DUI’s”

New York, NY

By: MLAA

    The U.S. Coast Guard will always act in what the agency perceives as the best interests of the U.S. Coast Guard–no matter what. The knowledge that the Coast Guard always puts the Coast Guard first–even above the safety and security interests of mariners–is crucial when trying to understand a case like U.S. Coast Guard vs. Arne G. Svendsen (Coast Guard Case # 2279938).

    Merchant Mariner Arne Gunnar Svendsen submitted a renewal application for his Merchant Mariner Credential (MMC) to the U.S. Coast Guard through the Regional Exam Center (REC) in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Coast Guard conducted a background check on Svedsen and discovered Svedsen had an extensive criminal history dating back more than 20 years. The Coast Guard also discovered that Svedsen had already submitted four fraudulent MMC applications to the REC in New Orleans. It appears from the record that the Coast Guard did not run background checks on Svedsen during the previous credential renewal cycles, and did not discover his criminal history.

    When the Coast Guard did finally run a background check, they found that Svedsen was a convicted violent criminal as well as a convicted sex predator. Svedsen’s criminal convictions included:

“Assault with a deadly weapon on a sheriff’s deputy”

“3rd Degreee Sexual Assault”

“Two separate DUI convictions 2 weeks apart”

    These convictions each constituted a "Conviction that would preclude the issuance of MMC" in violation of 46 U.S.C. § 7703(2). 

Additionally, the Coast Guard possessed extensive evidence that Arne Svedsen had submitted “four fraudulent MMC applications” to the U.S. Coast Guard, concealing serious criminal conduct in each of those submissions.

All four of those fraudulent applications potentially constituted criminal violations of 18 U.S. Code § 1001, which states “whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully…makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation…shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years…”

Upon discovering Svedsen’s criminal history and pattern of making criminal false representations on MMC applications, the Coast Guard brought Suspension & Revocation charges against him seeking to revoke his MMC. Svedesen responded by requesting a hearing before a U.S. Coast Guard Administrative Law Judge, and a hearing was scheduled in New Orleans.

Svedsen showed up to the hearing, likely believing he would have his MMC revoked, and instead was offered an incredible deal by the Coast Guard and the ALJ judge: a 3 month suspension of his MMC, and then he could get back to shipping out. Svedsen took the deal, and it was all memorialized in one of the Coast Guard’s infamous Secret Settlement Agreements.

    MLAA wonders why the Coast Guard would offer this Agreement and hand out this obscenely lenient punishment to a mariner who the agency learned was a convicted violent criminal who used deadly force against a police officer, as well as a convicted sex criminal, as well as a mariner with a clear and reckless drinking problem who had multiple convictions for driving under the influence. 

    The answer might be that the Coast Guard was highly embarrassed to have allowed Svedsen to maintain a MMC for decades, and the Coast Guard did not want the history of the case and of Svedsen’s background and of the Coast Guard’s background check failures to become public.

If Svedsen had insisted on a full Suspension and Revocation hearing before an ALJ judge, the proceedings and the factual background would have become part of a public record, and it would have been an embarrassing safety failure on the part of the Coast Guard.

    Instead, in order to protect the Coast Guard, the agency and the Coast Guard ALJ judge offered Svedsen a settlement agreement he could not refuse, and the whole affair was swept under the rug.

In the sweeping under the rug, the Coast Guard protected itself by allowing a known sex predator and a known violent criminal to continue working at sea under the authority of his U.S. Coast Guard issued MMC.