The Investigative Committee and OMON riot police swooped into the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant in a raid Tuesday, seizing documents and isolating employees at their workstations in a probe into an August accident that killed 75 people.
RusHydro, the state-controlled owner of the plant, said the surprise raid halted all activities there, snarling repair work and efforts to prepare the plant for the winter.
“Two administrative buildings have been blocked. Employees are sitting at their workplaces and are not permitted to move around,” plant spokesman Alexei Dubovets said in a telephone interview.
He could not say whether employees were being questioned. “I’m in my office as well and don’t know what is happening,” he said.
At 5 p.m. local time, officials with the Investigative Committee were putting together a list of employees who are pregnant or have disabilities, RusHydro’s press service said. More than 1,500 people are employed at the plant.
The investigators and police officers entered the plant at 10 a.m.
The Investigative Committee has been working at the plant since the Aug. 17 accident caused a flood that killed 75 workers, but this is the first time that OMON officers have been brought in.
“The company has been fully complying with the investigation, and we are very surprised at the presence of the OMON,” Dubovets said.
The Investigative Committee declined to comment on the matter.
The cause of the accident is still under investigation. The industrial watchdog, the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Atomic Inspection, issued a report early this month that blamed six high-ranking officials for making decisions that led to the disaster, while 19 RusHydro officials were accused of failing in their duties to prevent accidents.
On the list of 19 officials is Alexander Toloshinov, head of the company’s Siberian division, who was dismissed from his job by the RusHydro board of directors Monday, Kommersant reported. Toloshinov will be replaced by Andrei Konovalov, a former executive in Oleg Deripaska’s EN+ energy holding. The board also accepted the resignation of financial director Sergei Yushin, who told Kommersant that he was leaving the company to take a new job. Yushin is being replaced by David Kuznetsov of Levit, a company controlled by Novatek chief Leonid Mikhelson.
Toloshinov is the first RusHydro executive to lose his job after the dam disaster. RusHydro chief Vasily Zubakin still has his post despite speculation that he might be fired. Zubakin also was named on the list of 19 officials.
Of the six officials blamed for creating conditions for the accident, only one, Boris Vaindzikher of TGK-1, currently sits on the RusHydro’s board of directors.
RusHydro referred questions about the board’s Monday decisions to the Energy Ministry, whose minister, Sergei Shmatko, is the chairman of RusHydro. The ministry had no immediate comment on the board meeting or Tuesday’s raid.