Bolivian authorities have arrested the chief executive officer of the now-suspended LaMia airlines, after an air crash killed 71 passengers including most of the Brazilian football team Chapecoense. The Bolivian airline’s licence was suspended after the crash.

The pilot Miguel Quiroga, who was among the victims, has been heavily criticised after it was revealed that an official had warned him that the plane was low on fuel. The flight crashed as it did not have enough fuel and was delayed in its landing. It had run out of fuel as it approached the Medellin airport. The Chapecoense team was flying to Medellin to play the Sudamericana Cup final against Atletico Nacional.

The official who said she had warned Quiroga of a fuel shortage, Celia Castedo, has fled to Brazil from Bolivia after she revealed the information. Castedo said she is now being persecuted for going public with the information, BBC reported. Bolivia has asked Brazilian authorities to turn her away, and said, “What she has done is very serious…It’s a way of escaping the judicial system.”

The aircraft, BAe 146, crashed in the hills outside the city of Medellin, because its fuel reserves were low, investigators said. A recording revealed that Bolivian pilot Miguel Quiroga had informed the control tower at Medellin airport that the plane was “in total failure, total electrical failure, without fuel”. He had requested permission for an emergency landing. Air traffic controllers at Medellin had reportedly asked the pilot to wait while another flight made an urgent landing. The audio clip was accessed by Colombian media. Now, the aircraft’s black boxes, which record flight details, will be sent to United Kingdom, where investigators will download the information.

According to international flight regulations, aircraft need to have enough reserve fuel to fly for 30 minutes after reaching their destinations. “In this case, sadly, the aircraft did not have enough fuel to meet the regulations for contingency,” Freddy Bonilla, secretary of airline security at Colombia’s aviation authority, told The Guardian.