The "black box" from a LUKoil executive's Mercedes involved in a fatal car crash last month will be sent to Germany for analysis, a source close to the carmaker's Russian office said Monday.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to investigate the mysterious Feb. 25 crash, which left two women dead and injured Anatoly Barkov, a vice president at LUKoil. The accident and a perceived police cover-up in the aftermath have outraged the public.
Barkov's Mercedes S-500 was equipped with a device that tracks a car's movements and can help determine the causes of a crash, the source said.
The vehicle collided head-on with a Citroen C3 driven by Olga Alexandrina, killing her and her mother-in-law, Vera Sidelnikova.
Traffic police initially blamed Alexandrina, saying she illegally pulled her car into oncoming traffic. But several independent witnesses challenged the report, and bloggers said it was suspicious that no police or security cameras captured the accident on a busy stretch of highway in southern Moscow.
"In the absence of cameras, the black box can be useful," said Sergei Kanayev, head of the Moscow branch of the Russian Federation of Car Owners. The group has spearheaded efforts for an independent investigation of the crash.
Meanwhile, Russian blogs were again flooded with commentary on the incident — this time from a suspected Internet bot accusing the two women of being to blame.
Some bloggers said the posts, made simultaneously in dozens of LiveJournal blogs, suggested that LUKoil was trying to manipulate public opinion of the crash. Blogger and public activist Marina Litvinovich drew attention to LiveJournal user Well-bred, who posted identical comments in nearly 50 journals Monday.
According to its entry, the Well-bred blog was started two years ago, but Litvinovich said she suspected that it was a bot. "There are Internet companies for hire who do such postings," she said.
Dmitry Dolgov, a spokesman for LUKoil, denied that the company was involved in the posts.
"LUKoil doesn't see the point in using the blogosphere to present its opinion of events," he said. "If needed, the company will release information on the company's letterhead."
The company has said it will cooperate with any investigation. Dolgov also said Barkov, who was injured in the crash, has not met with relatives of the women who were killed. ?
Separately, LUKoil said Monday that the Mercedes did not have special lights or signals giving it the right to violate traffic rules, but it confirmed that the car's plates were removed to prevent them from being lost while the wreck was towed away, RIA-Novosti reported.
The statement also confirmed a Vesti FM report Monday that a third passenger — a bodyguard — had been in the Mercedes, RIA-Novosti reported.
Initial reports said that only Barkov and his driver were in the vehicle.