UPDATE: Court puts 4 suspects in Druzhba case under house arrest

(Adds Transneft’s comments in paragraph 2)

SAMARA, Jun 11 (PRIME) -- The district court of Samara has placed four employees of Transneft-Druzhba company suspected of involvement in oil stealing and contamination in the Druzhba pipeline under house arrest until June 30, a court representative and Igor Dyomin, adviser to the president of oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, told PRIME on Tuesday.

The criminal case was earlier initiated against six people who allegedly stole at least 1 million rubles of crude. The investigators believe that some of the suspects pumped chloride-contaminated oil into a junction point near the settlement of Nekrasovka in the Samara Region to conceal the theft. The dirty oil then moved to the main pipeline system.

The problem with the quality of oil coming from Russia to Europe across Belarus via the pipeline appeared in April. In Belarus, the Druzhba pipeline splits into two strings, one of which stretches to Poland and Germany, and the other to Ukraine, Slovakia and Hungary. Good-quality oil deliveries from Russia via the pipeline resumed in early May, but there is still much dirty oil in the system.

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