‘Totally Secret’ owner dies in Russian plane crash

MOSCOW, MARCH 9: A Russian passenger plane crashed on take-off from a Moscow airport on Thursday killing nine people, including a well-kno...

MOSCOW, MARCH 9: A Russian passenger plane crashed on take-off from a Moscow airport on Thursday killing nine people, including a well-known journalist and an oil company executive.

A spokesperson for Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said the Yak-40 short-range passenger jet with five crew and four passengers on board was bound from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

The spokesperson could give no reason for the crash and a guard at the airport gates said the three-engined plane slammed into the runway soon after taking off.

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The oil company Alliance Group said in a statement that its chairman Ziya Bazhayev and the head of media group Sovershenno Sekretno (totally secret), Artyom Borovik, had died in the crash along with two other Alliance employees.

Borovik was a well known journalist, whose holding company owned mainly investigative newspapers. A television show called Sovershenno Sekretno was dropped from state-owned RTR television in June 1999 and Borovik said the decision was linked to the upcoming elections. A government official said the programme was dropped made because it dealt in "kompromat" or compromising material used to smear politicians.

Bazhayev’s company acted as a consultant in the oil business and holds stakes in refineries.

The Sheremetyevo-1 domestic airport and Sheremetyevo-2 international airport, which share runways, were briefly closed.