Christophe de Marjerie the 63 year old managing director of Total, the French multi-national oil company, was killed last night when his private jet collided with a snow plough when trying to take off from a small airfield near Moscow.
Paris based Total is one of the few oil companies not American owned or controlled and de Marjerie spent his whole career making Total one of the top 20 companies in the world and France's richest enterprise. He had important links with the Russian oil producers and government and was returning from a visit to Medvedev's country dacha.
Renowned for his ex-Raj like moustache ( he looked like a trombone player in a brass band, one paper said) and affable manner, de Marjerie was the product of the French upper middle class, privately educated and from a family that included the founder of the Taittinger champagne house. He said coming from a privileged background entailed certain responsibilities to give back to society the opportunities he had been afforded.
In 2006 he was arrested, handcuffed and humiliated ("without belt or glasses") during the so-called Total affair when the company was suspected of subverting the "oil for aid" programme of the United Nations. All charges were thrown out by the courts after 8 years of investigation and a court hearing in 2013.
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