A
snowplough driver, at a Moscow airport , Vladimir Martynenko, has said
he lost his bearings before a collision with a private plane in which
Total boss Christophe de Margerie died.
Vladimir Martynenko told Russian TV he was unaware he had entered the runway, BBC reports.
Margerie, 63, chief executive of the French oil firm, was killed in the crash along with three crew members.
Russian investigators have alleged that the driver of the snowplough was drunk at the time, but his family has denied this.
The
Russian authorities have launched a criminal investigation. Martynenko,
60, was detained after the crash, which took place in poor weather at
Vnukovo airport, south-west of Moscow, at around midnight on Monday.
His
family insisted he was not drunk. “My client has chronic heart disease,
he doesn’t drink at all,” his lawyer Alexander Karabanov told Interfax
news agency.
“When I lost my bearings I did not notice when I drove out on to the runway,” Mr Martynenko told Russia’s Channel One TV.
“The
plane was preparing to take off, and I practically didn’t see it or
hear it because the machine was running. I didn’t even see the lights, I
did not see a thing, and then the crash happened.”
Although
there had been snow in Moscow, it was not thought to be lying thick on
the ground when the Dassault Falcon plane clipped the snowplough and
burst into flames.
Christophe de
Margerie was one of France’s leading industrialists and was returning to
Paris, reportedly after a meeting on foreign investment with Russian
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at his country residence outside Moscow.
Total
announced on Wednesday that his job would be taken over by Philippe
Pouyanne, the current head of the company’s refining and chemicals
division.
Thierry Desmarest, who
served as chairman and chief executive from 1995-2007, will become
Total’s chairman until the end of 2015, when Mr Pouyanne will take on
both posts.
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