WELLINGTON, New Zealand ? Pike River Coal's former chief executive Peter Whittall faces 12 criminal charges over the 2010 mine explosion that killed 29 miners, the New Zealand Labour Department said Friday.
A methane-fueled explosion rocked the Pike River coal mine in southwestern New Zealand on Nov. 19, 2010, trapping the 29 men. A second major explosion five days later dashed hopes that any workers had survived.
The department announced charges Thursday in the disaster but declined to immediately detail them or name the defendants because of strict court rules on name-suppression in pending cases. It said Friday that those rules were lifted in this case.
Whittall's charges include four counts of failing to ensure that "no action or inaction" in his role at the company "harmed another person."
"These failures relate to methane explosion management, strata management, ventilation management and mitigating the risk and impact of an explosion," the department said in a release.
Other charges were also filed against the now-bankrupt Pike River Coal company and against the VLI Drilling company.
Whittall's lawyers said Whittall denied all the charges and would fight them.
"Mr. Whittall is a coal miner," his lawyers wrote in a release. "He comes from a coal mining town and has worked in underground mines all his life. He maintains that he would never do anything to put men who worked with him at risk. And Mr. Whittall will fight being scapegoated now."
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