MOSCOW, October 21 (RAPSI) – A probe into a criminal case over deaths of 36 people as a result of an explosion at the Severnaya Mine in the city of Vorkuta in Komi Republic in 2016 had been completed, Svetlana Petrenko, the official spokesperson of the Investigative Committee told RAPSI on Monday.

Investigation has collected sufficient evidence as concerns 14 defendants; the case materials making more than 392 volumes was submitted to a prosecutor’s office to settle the question of approval of the indictment, according to Petrenko.

Among the defendants are a number of the mine top managers.

All of them stay charged with a crime defined as a breach of industrial safety at a hazardous production facility resulting in grievous bodily harm, major material loss and deaths of two and more persons because of negligence.

Besides, one of the defendants, an inspector of a local representation of the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Oversight (Rostekhnadzor) has been charged with negligence resulted in deaths of two and more persons and major material loss.

Investigators believe that managers of the mine wishing to hit their production targets and avoid sanctions on the part of their superiors systematically, over the course of several years, had been breaching industrial safety rules, what resulted in an explosion of methane-air mixture claiming 36 lives of workers and rescuers and leaving injured 17 persons more on February 25, 2016; the second explosion, on February 28, which occurred due to negligence during post-accident recovery works, resulted in six deaths and six injuries.