Tina Kandelaki Has Mumps and a Double
New details came to light yesterday about the car accident involving Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov, which took place in Nice in Saturday. Nice police have ruled out the presence of a bomb in the Ferrari Enzo driven by Kerimov and have labeled the incident “an ordinary traffic accident.” They also revealed that the passenger in the car with Kerimov was Russian television hostess Tina Kandelaki. Kandelaki herself states that she was “sick with the mumps” over the weekend and was not in France.
Businessman Suleiman Kerimov, ranked by Forbes this year as the 72nd richest person on earth with a fortune of $7.1 billion, was behind the wheel of the Ferrari and lost control of it on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice Saturday. The car crossed the sidewalk and hit a tree, breaking in two and catching fire. Kerimov was taken by helicopter to the Conception regional burn center in Marseille, where he is now attached to artificial respiration.
New details emerged yesterday. The Nice police division commissioner investigating the accident told Kommersant that “Mr. Kerimov arrived in the Nice airport on board a private airplane… The car was already waiting for him at the airport. Close to 4:00 in the afternoon, Kerimov's car turned off the airport road. The highway leading to the city was crowded, but the car cut off other drivers. In an area where the speed limit was 70 km./hr., the driver was going much faster than that. It is still hard to give the exact speed, but, judging by the damage to the car, which was practically sheared in half, e exceeded by speed limit seriously. The car is very powerful, and Mr. Kerimov was apparently unable to control it. The road was wet and the driver was revving the car heavily.” Only 399 660-horsepower Ferrari Enzos were made. They are capable of hitting speeds of over 350 km./hr. According to the Nice Matin newspaper, the car was registered in Switzerland and had been “provided by a friend” of Kerimov.
The police commissioner said that the police laboratory in Marseille had already completed its examination of the accident. “No traces of explosives were found on the body of the car,” the commissioner said. “That is fully confirmed. Therefore, the hypothesis that a bomb was placed in the car can be rejected. It was a usual traffic accident.”
A spokesman for the Marseille hospital center that includes the Conception burn center stated that Kerimov's condition “causes concern and the next 48 hours will play a decisive role.” He added that the doctor treating Kerimov would not give journalists information on Kerimov's condition. Earlier, the hospital center's press secretary stated that the businessman's family had requested that no information on his condition be released. Yesterday evening, the Conception burn center would only tell Kommersant that his condition was “serious.” It refused to say where Kerimov was burned or what his diagnosis was.
French police and media determined the identity of Kerimov's companion yesterday as well. She was dragged from the burning car along with Kerimov by passersby and other drivers. According to Nice Matin, she was “31-year-old Tinatin Kandelaki, who received light burns on her wrists and hips.” Tinatin Kandelaki is the full name of the Russian television hostess better known as Tina Kandelaki. “Kandelaki left Saint Roch Hospital in Nice Saturday evening, several hours after being admitted, to return to her homeland by plane,” Nice Matin reported. The admitting department of Saint Roch Hospital confirmed for Kommersant that a patient named Tina Kandelaki was actually admitted to the immediate care ward. “She was examined and released,” an attendant at the hospital said. The hospital's press secretary said that she was “not authorized to release the patient's name,” but admitted that “her name sounded like Tinata' and the last name began with a K… She was released on the same day because she refused hospitalization.”
“The name of Kerimov's passenger is what they are calling her in the press, Tina Kandelaki” the Nice police commissioner told Kommersant. “I can confirm that. She was slightly injured and received minor burns. She was given first aid at the hospital and she quickly left with a representative of Mr. Kerimov. The passenger left the scene very quickly. We did not even have a chance to question her as a witness.”
Yesterday morning, STS Media company confirmed that Kandelaki was in the same car as Kerimov. “She was there,” STS Media PR director Alexander Chernov told RIA Novosti information agency. “The winners of TEFI awards, including Tina, were invited to France. Now she is in Moscow. I've spoken to her, everything is fine.” Kandelaki was just awarded the TEFI television prize for “Best talk show host” for her program Details. In the second half of the day, however, representatives of Kandelaki contacted by Kommersant denied her involvement in the accident. Chernov told Kommersant that he had misunderstood the situation, “had not spoken” with Kandelaki and only knew that she intended “to go somewhere, I don't know where.” Kandelaki's concert director Alexander Krivobokov stated that the television personality “simply got sick. She has the mumps.” STS Media president Alexander Rodnyansky was away from Moscow yesterday and could not be reached by phone.
Kandelaki herself called a Kommersant correspondent and explained emotionally that she “didn't fly anywhere” and “was home” after winning the TEFI prize. “We planned to go to a restaurant with friends on Sunday to celebrate the prize but I felt badly and called a doctor. He diagnosed mumps,” Kandelaki recounted. “A flight to France – that's the sick fantasy of journalists… How could a person get out of a car after its gas tank exploded?” When asked about the statements at STS Media, she replied “that's how they joke there,” and she said of statements by the hospital in Nice that “it's all lies. They couldn't give out that information because it's confidential.”
Alexander Voronov, Alexander Plakhov, Arina Borodina
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 28, 2006
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