MOSCOW, August 8 (RIA Novosti) – A criminal case was opened Thursday over the suspected food poisoning of 110 workers employed by a Turkish construction firm in Moscow, Russian prosecutors said.
On July 7, 110 construction workers – mainly Turkish nationals – employed at a building site in the business district known as Moscow City were hospitalized with acute gastrointestinal infections, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement posted on its website, adding that two of the workers were in a serious condition.
A preliminary investigation has shown that the outbreak of the infection was caused by gross violations of health and safety rules by both the employer and a catering firm, prosecutors said.
The prosecutor’s office also said staff at the Moscow office of the Turkish company Ant Yapi Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi denied representatives of the federal consumer rights watchdog access to the construction site to carry out an inspection. A police detail had to be brought in to ensure access.
The watchdog subsequently suspended the food supplier’s operations.
No response from the construction company had been reported by Thursday evening, several hours after Russian media picked up the story.
