Two defendants in Kolskaya rig disaster trial maintain innocence
MURMANSK. April 18 (Interfax) - A former acting deputy general director at ArktikMorNefteGazRazvedka (AMNGR), Boris Likhvan, who is a second defendant in the case over the sinking of the Kolskaya platform (owned by AMNGR), pleaded innocent in his last statement at the Pervomaisky district court in Murmansk on Tuesday, an Interfax correspondent reported from the courtroom.
"I do not see myself as someone who committed the crime. The charge (...) was built upon the material of the falsified criminal case," Likhvan said.
He recalled that a former special investigator from the Russian Investigative Committee's Far Eastern branch for transport investigations, Vitaly Ferder, who was probing the Kolskaya disaster, is himself a subject of a criminal investigation for the falsification of evidence and results of the inquiry. "Both Ferder and (Yury) Melekhov [the AMNGR general director at the time of the disaster] acted in collusion," Likhvan said.
The investigators and prosecutors chose to believe that the tragedy began when the Kolskaya started being towed across the Sea of Okhotsk and not during the preceding process of developing and approving the towing operation, so as to divert the court's attention from the actions of the AMNGR management, Likhvan said.
"I have become convinced that the sinking of the platform and of 53 people was imminent from the moment when the AMNGR management made the decision to tow the Kolskaya platform in the Sea of Okhotsk in wintertime. AMNGR Deputy General Director Yury Melekhov, the company's appointee Vasily Vasetsky made the decision on the towing operation, while knowing that the helicopter pad was not fit for a helicopter, that there would be no escort vessel, that the poorly fastened rescue boats would be washed away overboard (...), knowing of the poor quality of the repairs in Magadan," Likhvan said.
Sentencing is due around May 2, judge Svetlana Korenkova said.
Earlier, the other co-defendant, AMNGR's acting chief engineer Leonid Bordzilovsky also maintained his innocence in the last statement. In his view, he is being charged with something that was in fact the responsibility of captains Sergei Danilov and Alexander Kozlov and the head of navigation safety Mikhail Tersin [all killed in the disaster], as well as Vasetsky and Melekhov.
In particular, the latter two were directly involved in the organizing of the last towing operation, while knowing that the decision had been made in breach of transport safety requirements, Bordzilovsky said.
Earlier the victims' lawyer Alexander Lyashenko told journalists that the victims see Melekhov and Vasetsky, who are both being treated as witnesses in the case, as the main culprits in the tragedy.
The trial over the Kolskaya disaster began on July 14, 2015. The defendants are Likhvan and Bordzilovsky. Both have been charged with violation of the safety rules for sea navigation, resulting inadvertently in two and more deaths.
The Kolskaya rig sank in a storm on December 18, 2011, while being towed across the Sea of Okhotsk with 67 people onboard. Fourteen were rescued. Only 17 bodies were found and identified.