MOSCOW, September 27 (RAPSI) – A criminal case over Total CEO Cristophe de Maergerie’s lethal airplane crash in Vnukovo airport in 2014 has reached the Solntsevsky District Court of Moscow for another review, the court’s spokesperson Georgy Yengibarov has told RAPSI. 

The case against airport flight manager Roman Dunayev and air traffic controllers Alexander Kruglov and Nadezhda Arkhipova was returned to court after the end of additional investigation. In 2017, the court returned the case to prosecutors in order to fix the problems found during the first consideration.

Preliminary court hearings in the case are set for October 4.

In August 2017, lawyer Olga Dinze said that the Investigative Committee resumed investigation into a separate criminal case over the crash of de Margerie’s airplane in Vnukovo. Earlier that year, the Moscow City Court upheld an order to return the case to prosecutors.

In July 2017, snow plow driver Vladimir Martynenko and Vnukovo lead airfield service engineer Vladimir Ledenev, who had earlier pleaded guilty and signed a plea bargain, were sentenced to 4 and 3.5 years in penal colony respectively and were immediately pardoned as part of the broad amnesty program on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of victory in World War II.

Martynenko and Ledenev were charged with violation of traffic safety rules resulted in the death of two or more persons. The widow of Total CEO Cristophe de Maergerie, relatives of the deceased flight crew members, Vnukovo airport and Unijet air carrier have been recognized as victims in the case.

Christophe de Margerie died in a plane crash at Vnukovo airport on October 21, 2014, when his plane’s wing hit a snow plow. Among the victims were three crew members, all French citizens.

On October 25, 2016, the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) published its final report on the investigation into the death of de Margerie. The report’s authors listed several factors, which, when combined, may have resulted in the plane crash. Among potential causes of the crash are: violation of regulations over control of alcohol use by drivers of special equipment, absence of equipment for listening to traffic controllers in snow plow machines, inefficient organization of work with subsystem of observation and control of airfield, no measures taken by the plane’s crew to prevent takeoff after receiving information about “machine that intersects a road”.