OREANDA-NEWS. August 20, 2014. Kazakhstan-based Eurasia Insurance Company may have to make a claim payout exceeding USD 3 million for the crash of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) MH17 plane.

Mr Shakir Iminov, the insurer’s Head of PR and Advertising Department told Tengrinews, an English-language news website, that Eurasia Insurance may be liable for a maximum of USD3.175 million in connection with the plane’s downing.

Mr Iminov said: "We reinsured the risks of the company that insured it [the plane]." However, he declined to name the other insurance company, saying only that Eurasia has been cooperating with it for more than five years and there was a contract signed by the two.

He also said that the payments to the families of the deceased who died in the plane crash could reach USD 100,000 per passenger.

Payments will be made right after the investigations into the downing of the passenger jet are completed and may take up to two years to make. The employees of Eurasia Insurance are not planning to visit the crash site of the MAS Boeing 777, he said.

The plane crashed on 17 July in the rebel-held Donetsk region of Ukraine. The plane was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, when it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 passengers on board.

Eurasia is also a member of the reinsurance pool for the MAS MH370 passenger plane which went missing on 8 March this year in the Indian Ocean. No trace of MH370 has been found since it vanished with 239 people aboard.