A court has recognized the evidence gathered by the Main Investigations Directorate of the Russia’s Investigative Committee sufficient to convict Deputy CEO of OOO Spetstekhrekonstruktsia Anatoly Kruglov, and workers of Moscow Metro: senior track supervisor of Moscow Underground Railway Valery Bashkatov, section deputy chief of the metro’s repair department Alexei Trofimov and senior track supervisor assistant Yuri Gordov. They were found guilty of crimes under part 3 of article 263 of the RF Penal Code (violations of transportation safety causing the death of two or more persons).
The court and investigators have revealed that a metro train crashed on 15 July 2014, at around 8:34 AM, on a section between Park Pobedy and Slavyansky Boulevard due to a failure to place haulages between the blades of a switch mechanism located on a ramp to another track under construction. 24 people were killed in the crash and 188 were injured. In addition Moscow metro suffered pecuniary damage of over 331 million rubles.
During the whole investigation the accused did not admit their guilt, though the evidence, including results of examinations fully confirms the version of investigators. Namely, a comprehensive railway technical forensic examination, ran by 16 experts of leading scientific and research institutes of railway transport and other institutions, confirmed that the cause of the crash was the lack of a working and coupling links, meaning that the right and left blades were not connected properly which caused spontaneous joining of the left blade to the left stock rail. A photo and video technical examination showed that there was nothing in front of the train and the starting changing of the initial position of the blade which suggests that the wire Gordov had set instead of the proper holder, had been broken, and confirmed the version of railway experts. A computer technical forensic examination showed that the train had no technical failures and moved with proper speed at the moment of the accident.
This way, the investigators found a cause-and-effect connection between the actions of the accused the accident. Bashkatov and Trofimov worked to build this ramp in their free time and for illegal fee on the orders from Kruglov. Gordov not only supervised the job, but on 9 July personally twisted a wire brought by Trofimov instead of putting a link there.
The arguments of the lawyers that the crash had been caused by a failure in the train, a drop of power and some kind of an object in front of the train were carefully studied and refuted by the evidence.
We have already said that the investigators are going to prosecute not only the workers whose actions led to the tragedy. A criminal case against 6 senior officials and workers of Moscow Metro is on the finishing stage at the moment. The accused are head of Track Service of Moscow metro Yuri Silyanov, his deputy Valery Malyshev, supervisor of the 3rd distance of the track of the Track Service Nikolai Melnikov and Anatoly Kazantsev who implemented Melnikov’s functions at the moment of the crush. All of them are charged with metro safety breach involving death of two or more people. The investigation is going to be finished soon and the accused will start reading the case files.
At the same time by means of other complex expert examinations, the investigators are taking measures to find the guilt of other workers of Moscow Metro and organizations obliged to arrange for and conduct construction supervision over the work, but had failed to do that.
The court sentenced Yuri Gordov to 6 years in prison, Anatoly Kruglov, Valery Bashkatov and Alexei Trofimov to 5.5 years each to be served in a minimum-security penal colony.
Head of Media Relations V.I. Markin
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