The owner of the Swiss nightclub that caught fire on New Year’s Day was allegedly seen in footage filming the waitress who unwittingly sparked the inferno.
In a clip taken from the deadly night at Le Constellation in Crans-Montana, a woman can be seen in the foreground holding a champagne bottle topped with a lit sparkler in one hand and a phone in the other.
According to the German newspaper Bild, the woman is believed to be the co-owner of the ski resort bar, Jessica Moretti, 40.
Another woman, who appears to be waitress Cyane Panine, 24, can be seen on the shoulders of Mateo Lesguer, 23, the in-house DJ.
She is wearing a Dom Pérignon ‘motorcycle crash helmet’ that completely covers her face with a black visor, meaning she can hardly see anything as she carries a bottle plugged with a sparkler.
The alleged Ms Moretti is seen in the footage filming the celebratory scenes in the cramped bar as the ceiling catches fire.
The sparkler is said to have ignited the soundproofing foam in the basement ceiling, leading to 40 deaths and 116 others being horrifically burned.
Both Cyane and Mateo lost their lives in the inferno, but Ms Moretti is believed to have been one of the first survivors to escape.
Video cameras are said to have caught Ms Moretti getting away from the scene of the fire as quickly as possible, in her car, after quickly escaping with the till containing the night’s cash takings under her arm, while hundreds of young customers were trapped inside.
Cyane’s parents have already alleged that an emergency exit was locked to prevent people from sneaking in and avoiding the table charges equivalent to around £900 each.
Investigators have since established that 34 of the 40 who died in the fire perished on the bar’s small stairwell, which had been reduced in width by a third by Ms Moretti’s husband, Jacques, 49, during renovation work in 2015.
It led up from the basement, where the fire was allegedly triggered by sparklers in champagne bottles that ignited foam soundproof cladding in the ceiling.
‘This amounts to 85 per cent of the dead,’ said one enquiry source. ‘They were trapped on the tiny staircase as everyone fought to get out, but they were unable to escape.
‘Many were forced back into the basement when the stairwell became completely overcrowded and fell apart. It had been significantly reduced in size by the owners.’
Swiss law enforcement officers found numerous bodies at the bottom of the staircase after the wooden steps and handrails collapsed.
They could not withstand the pressure of the fleeing crowd, detached from the wall, and plunged into the basement.
Mr Moretti has admitted to reducing the width of the stairwell from three metres to just one metre.
He carried out the renovations himself when he took over management of the Constellation in 2015, and it is not known whether he had planning permission or not.
According to multiple enquiry sources who have spoken to the media in France and Italy, the modification ‘played a decisive role in the disaster’.
When questioned by prosecutors on January 9, Mr Moretti did not discuss the stairwell renovation, but he admitted that a ‘ground-floor service door’ was locked from the inside when the fire started.
He said that he forced it open upon arriving at the scene and found victims dying from suffocation behind it.
Mr Moretti said he did not know why the door was locked, and, along with his wife, has denied any civil or criminal wrongdoing.
Ms Moretti is now under investigation for multiple alleged crimes, including ‘manslaughter by negligence’, while Mr Moretti is in pre-trial detention for at least the next three months.
Last week, a Swiss court imposed a travel ban on Ms Moretti as an alternative to pre-trial detention due to what prosecutors claim is a ‘risk of flight’.
She was ordered to surrender her passport and must report to the police every day, authorities say.
The Moretti’s face up to 20 years in prison if charged and found guilty of manslaughter.
It comes after it was revealed that the CCTV from the night of the fire mysteriously ‘crashed’ three minutes before the fire broke out.
According to Bild, detectives only have access to the footage up to 1.23am – three minutes before the fire began.
In his January 1 interrogation, Moretti said of the CCTV: ‘At that point, the system crashed. I can’t reset it.’
He reportedly showed investigators screenshots of the latest recordings, with 11 camera angles pointed at the smoking room, the DJ, the bar, and sofas where people were sitting.
Pictures and videos of the bar on social media also vanished hours after the tragedy, raising suspicions that evidence was being destroyed, Bild reported.
