Medvedev Orders Probe After Deadly Russian River Cruise
July 12, 2011, 1:31 PM EDTBy Ilya Arkhipov and Lyubov Pronina
(Updates with Medvedev comment in second paragraph.)
July 12 (Bloomberg) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev vowed “a complete review” of passenger ships after one of the deadliest accidents since the collapse of the Soviet Union killed as many as 129 people on an unlicensed cruise.
“We need harsh measures aimed at those violating transportation laws,” Medvedev told the leaders of parliamentary parties outside Moscow today. “It’s obvious that we can no longer put up with this.”
Ninety bodies have so far been recovered after the July 10 shipwreck on the Volga River and almost no hope remains for finding more survivors from the Bulgaria double-deck river cruise ship, Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu told Medvedev yesterday. Of 208 people aboard the tourist boat, 79 people were rescued, according to the ministry.
Medvedev, a former lawyer who made combating corruption a centerpiece of his term, ordered a probe of the operator, ships and transportation officials. About 120 tourist river boats are currently in service in the European part of Russia, all of them built in Germany and Czechoslovakia before 1991, the Russian Tourism Union said in a statement on its website today.
Criminal Probe
The Investigative Committee said today it detained and opened a criminal probe into a local river-transport official and the head of the company that leased and operated the boat. The vessel didn’t meet the required safety standards and wasn’t properly insured, while the crew was working without a contract with the operator, the committee said on its website.
Medvedev declared today a day of mourning, and he and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin expressed condolences. The federal government will pay 1 million rubles ($35,400) to families of the deceased and compensate those injured in the accident, Putin told reporters in Moscow today.
“State control has increased in the past 10 years, but there is more bribe-taking and less order,” Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst, said by phone from Moscow. “Perhaps now, if not Putin himself, then his People’s Front, will come out with an initiative to toughen and broaden state control.”
Russia is the world’s most corrupt major economy, according to Berlin-based Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index released in October.
People’s Front
Putin, who stepped down as president in 2008 because of a ban on serving more than two consecutive terms, in May formed the All-Russia People’s Front, a coalition of interest groups including labor, business and women, to broaden the political base for his United Russia party.
The disaster raises concerns about safety oversight and regulations of Russia’s passenger transportation, Medvedev said.
“The number of old tubs in operation exceeds all limits,” he said. “The government owns only a small number of these ships, but that doesn’t mean that the government should shirk control.
The Bulgaria hadn’t been overhauled since 1980 and was running with a faulty left engine, and the cruise was operated without a license to carry passengers, the Prosecutor General’s Office said on its website. The boat had passed an inspection this year, according to state television.
The Bulgaria was listing to the right when it left Kazan, which may be one of the reasons it sank, Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Investigative Committee said on state television. A criminal investigation has been opened into violations of transportation safety regulations, according to the Investigative Committee’s website.
Worst in 25 Years
The incident is the worst riverboat disaster in more than 25 years, according to Alexei Klyavin, president of the Association of Shipping Companies. Plane crashes in Irkutsk killed 125 people in 2006 and 145 people in 2001, according to the Aviation Safety Network’s website.
The boat sank “in minutes, very fast,” Liliya Khaziyeva, a spokeswoman for the Rescue Service from the neighboring Udmurtia region, said by phone yesterday from a boat near the accident site. “We found dead people wearing safety jackets, people who were simply unable to leave the ship.”
Divers are working at depths of 7 to 14 meters, and workers have combed the river banks and islands in an area where the water stretches into a reservoir about 30 kilometers across, Khaziyeva said.
Returning to Kazan
The ship was returning to Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, from the town of Bolgar when it sank about 740 kilometers (460 miles) east from Moscow at 1:58 p.m. local time on July 10. It sank about three kilometers from shore, according to a statement on the Emergency Ministry’s website.
Nikolai Chernov, a survivor, told state television he saw at least two ships pass by without offering help.
Divers have now reached a recreation hall on the sunken ship where as many as 50 children may have been trapped, state television channel Rossiya 24 reported. The bodies of the captain and his wife were also recovered, Rossiya 24 said.
Rescue vessels expect to begin lifting the Bulgaria on July 16, Emergency Minister Shoigu said in comments broadcast on state television.
--With assistance from Ilya Khrennikov, Scott Rose and Marina Sysoyeva in Moscow and Margaret Talev in Washington. Editors: Paul Abelsky, Torrey Clark.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ilya Arkhipov in Moscow at iarkhipov@bloomberg.net; Lyubov Pronina in Moscow at lpronina@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net
