Indicted by a grand jury in a West Virginian district court on Thursday, security chief Hughie Elbert Stover was arrested on Monday.

Mine Health and Safety Administration investigators, with help from an FBI special agent, discovered that Stover and the security guards under his supervision had used a separate radio channel which could be heard by staff in the UBB mine office.

Stover was found to have made false statements about using this radio channel to provide warnings of unannounced MSHA site inspections, a practice at the mine before the tragic explosion which claimed 29 lives in April last year.

There was evidence that Stover had trained security guards in this practice and that he had also ordered the destruction of thousands of pages of security-related documents while he was under investigation.

The documents, some of which detailed the presence of MSHA inspectors during previous years, were placed in a trash compactor near the mine’s main security gate.

But the documents were later recovered and used as evidence against Stover.

Sixty-year-old Stover is scheduled for a federal court appearance on March 15.

“The company takes this matter very seriously and is committed to cooperating with the US Attorney’s office,” Massey said of the indictment.

“In fact, the company notified the US Attorney’s office within hours of learning that documents had been disposed of and took immediate steps to recover documents and turn them over to the US Attorney’s office.

“The matter remains under review and the company has no further comment at this time.”