Anthony Badalamenti, a 62-year-old former Haliburton manager, has pleaded guilty to destroying evidence after the rig explosion that spawned BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, The Associated Press reported. 11 workers were killed in the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
Badalamenti from Katy, Texas faces a maximum sentence of 1 year in prison with a $100,000 fine after his guilty plea on Tuesday. He was charged with one count of destruction of evidence, and sentencing is set for January 21.
Badalamenti served as the cementing technology director for Haliburton Energy Services, BP's contractor on the Deep Horizon drilling rig.
Prosecutors said that Badalamenti instructed two Haliburton employees "to delete data during a post-spill review of the cement job on BP's blown-out Maconda well," The AP also reported.
A federal judge accepted a separate plea agreement last month calling for the company to pay a $200,000 fine.
Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement that Halliburton's guilty plea and the charge against Badalamenti "mark the latest steps forward in the Justice Department's efforts to achieve justice on behalf of all those affected by the Deepwater Horizon explosion, oil spill, and environmental disaster."
Halliburton was not charged with a crime related to the causes of the disaster, The Huffington Post reported.
BP well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine await a trial next year on manslaughter charges, which contributed deaths of the 11 rig workers. Prosecutors claim they "botched a key safety test and disregarded abnormally high pressure readings that were glaring signs of trouble before the well blowout," news reports said.
Former BP executive David Rainey is charged with "concealing information from Congress about the amount of oil that was spewing from the blown-out well in 2010. Former BP engineer Kurt Mix is charged with deleting text messages and voicemails about the company's response to the spill," The Huffington Post repored.
