The boss of the SDS-Ugol Group, his managing director, his technical director and the chief engineer of the mine were arrested. They are suspected of violations of industrial safety and abuse standards.
Le Monde with AFP
Mikhail Fediaeev, Russian coal magnet weighing hundreds of millions of euros, was arrested after the accident in one of his mines in November who made 51 dead, announced, Wednesday, December 15, the investigators .
The boss of the SDS-UGOL group, as well as his Managing Director Guennadi Alekseev, his technical director Anton Iakoutov and the Chief Engineer of the Anatoli Lobanov Mine were arrested and are suspected of violations of industrial safety standards and Abuse of power, said the Russian inquiry committee. “The investigators intend to request the remand investment of all the persons arrested,” he added.
m. Fediaeev, 59, is a leading personality of the Kemerovo area, Siberia, where the mining sector is a driver of the economy. In 2019, the businessman was ranked 177 e in the list of richest personalities in Russia, with a fortune estimated at $ 550 million (€ 488 million), according to the Specialized Forbes magazine. His son Pavel is also a member of the Kremlin Party, Russia United.
285 people were in the mine
On November 25, 51 people, including five rescuers, perished in the Listviajnaia coal mine belonging to SDS-Ugol. A shot of gray, an explosion caused by a mixture between oxygen and methane, had probably caused the accident while 285 people were in the mine.
Accidents in the Russian mines, as elsewhere in ex-USSRs, remain relatively frequent and are often related to laxity in the application of safety standards, mismanagement, corruption or anti-equipment. .
In October 2019, the rupture of an illegal dam in a gold mine in Siberia had died. The same month, three people were killed after an accident in a Norilsk Nickel group, the world’s leading producer of nickel and palladium, in the Arctic.
In August 2017, eight workers had disappeared after flooding in a diamond mine operated by the Russian Alrosa group in Siberia. The world’s largest producer of diamonds, Alrosa had announced the abandonment of research after three weeks of emergency operations.
Another accident had made 91 dead and more than a hundred wounded in the Raspadskaya mine, in the region of Kemerovo, in May 2010. A Grisou shot had occurred at the moment when more than 300 minors were underground . A group of rescuers dispatched on site had been trapped by a second explosion.