Entrepreneur arrested in major oil contamination case complains that prosecutors are looking for ‘enemies of the people’

After organochloride contamination in the Druzhba oil pipeline left millions of dollars in Russian exports unusable, the leaders of a company called Nefteperevalka who were connected to the node where the contamination took place are facing criminal charges. Roman Trushev, one of the defendants, relayed his opinion of the charges to Kommersant: “The premier gave an order to find the guilty parties in a week, and there we go, they found their enemies of the people.”

Trushev argued that Transneft, a large, state-owned Russian energy conglomerate, should have been responsible for testing the oil that entered Druzhba for contaminants. He called for “an objective investigation” centered on the Transneft-Druzhba terminal and argued that Nefteperevalka’s input into the Druzhba pipeline was too small to cause serious damage, pointing instead to Tatneft, another small energy company. Tatneft denied using organochlorides in its operations. Trushev is currently located in Germany; he is the subject of an international search.