On 16 January, the French oil company Total and the Italian shipping classification society RINA were fined by a Parisian court over their involvement in the huge oil spill that resulted from the sinking of the tanker Erika off the coast of France. The Erika was a 24 year old rusting, Maltese-registered vessel that broke in two during a storm in 1999. The ship leaked 20,000 tonnes of oil in the sea and affected up to 400 km of the Brittany coast.