William M. Welch

USA TODAY

More than four years after an underground explosion killed 29 mine workers, a federal grand jury Thursday indicted the top executive of the West Virginia coal company that ran the mine, charging him with fraud and conspiracy to violate safety laws.

Don Blankenship, who was CEO of Massey Energy, becomes the highest-ranking executive to face charges in the deadly blast at the Upper Big Branch Mine, the worst U.S. coal mining disaster in 40 years.

Blankenship is charged with conspiring to commit and cause willful violations of federal mine safety and health standards at the mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia.

Federal prosecutors allege that Blankenship also conspired to hinder and impede federal mine safety inspections to conceal safety violations that were committed routinely at the mine.

He also is charged with making false statements about the company's safety practices to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the aftermath of the April 5, 2010 blast, and with securities fraud involving shares of Massey Energy.

According to the indictment, Blankenship knew there were hundreds of safety violations at the mine every year and could have stopped them: "Yet he fostered and participated in an understanding that perpetuated'' routine safety violations "in order to produce more coal, avoid the costs of following safety laws, and make more money."

Blankenship, 64, could face up to 31 years in prison if convicted.

William Taylor III, his lawyer, said in a statement that Blankenship "is entirely innocent of these charges'' and will fight them.

"Don Blankenship has been a tireless advocate for mine safety," Taylor said. "His outspoken criticism of powerful bureaucrats has earned this indictment. He will not yield to their effort to silence him. He will not be intimidated."

The indictment alleges Blankenship conspired to violate standards at the mine from January 2008 until the blast in 2010.

The explosion and investigation led to changes in federal oversight of mine safety compliance in the Appalachian coal fields, including new monthly inspections at problem mines.

Blankenship left the company in 2010 after the mine tragedy. He maintains an online presence with a website in which he tells of his hardscrabble upbringing in rural West Virginia and boasts of dining "at the tables of some of the richest and most powerful people in the world, including at the White House private dining table.''

On his website Blankenship asserts that "I am an honest man'' working to "make a small contribution to saving our country.'' He lashes out at corporate executives who are insufficiently conservative, lumping them with "liberals of the media, the union and the environmental movement responsible for the plight of our country.''

The indictment follows a more than four-year investigation that began with the mine explosion and expanded into the company's safety record and practices.

Alpha Natural Resources bought Massey for $7.1 billion in June 2012. Alpha said in a statement it has cooperated with the federal investigation since acquiring Massey.

"We can only hope that the outcome of the upcoming proceedings that were announced today will provide some level of comfort and closure for the families of the fallen miners and to the larger community where we live and operate," the company said in a statement.

Investigators found that worn and broken equipment created a spark that ignited accumulated coal dust and methane gas, and that broken and clogged water sprayers allowed the flare-up to become an explosive inferno. Blankenship has used his website to assert that natural gas in the mine was the cause of the explosion, rather than methane and coal dust.

Other coal executives including mine superintendent Gary May and former Massey security chief Hughie Elbert Stover have already received prison sentences of up to three years in connection with the case.

Contributing: Associated Press