MOSCOW, February 19. /TASS/. The actual owner of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, Dmitry Kamenshchik, has disclaimed responsibility for violations security rules in the airport’s operation which resulted the loss of human life in the January 2011 suicide bomb blast.
"When questioned in the capacity of an accused, Kamenshchik said that he pled not guilty and disagreed that his actions somehow contributed to the terrorist attack and the loss of human life," a reliable source has told TASS.
Moscow’s Basmanny court later on Friday will decide if Kamenshchik should be remanded in custody.
"He is accused of ‘carrying out works or providing services failing to meet security requirements’, which resulted in the negligent death of two or more people." He may face a prison term of up to ten years.
Kamenshchik, 47, chairs the Domodedovo airport’s board of directors. According to Forbes magazine, in 2015 he was Russia’s 27th wealthiest businessman owning assets estimated at $3.8 billion. In the early 1990s he established the East Line air carrier.
The other suspected accomplices, arrested within the framework of the same criminal case, are the former head of the Russian office of Airport Management Company Limited, Svetlana Trishina, managing director of the closed joint stock company Domodedovo Airport Aviation Security, Andrey Danilov, and former director of the airport complex Vyacheslav Nekrasov.
The investigators argue that Kamenshchik, Trishina, Nekrasov and Danilov had introduced a system of luggage inspection system at the entrances that made the airport more vulnerable and its civil aviation services inadequate to security rules.
According to the investigators, lax passenger security allowed suicide bomber Magomed Yevloyev wearing an explosive device to enter the building of Domodedovo airport and detonate the bomb. The blast killed 37 people and injured 172 others.