On 28 January 2006, the roof of one of the buildings at the Katowice International Fair (Polish: Międzynarodowe Targi Katowickie) collapsed in Chorzów/Katowice, Poland.

[1] At 16:15 GMT (17:15 local time), the central section of the roof of the hall collapsed, possibly due to the weight of snow on the building.

There are confirmed deaths of ten foreign tourists – one from Belgium, one from Germany, three from Slovakia, one from the Netherlands, one from Hungary and three from the Czech Republic.

Next day, officials stated that due to irregularities by funeral houses and dissection rooms, the wrong number of victims had been reported, and on 1 February there were 63 confirmed deaths.

After the tragedy, senior authorities arrived at the scene, including the Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński.

They were interviewed and charged with criminal negligence – allegedly they were aware of the fact that the building was unsafe and yet allowed the Fair to go on, and by doing so they contributed to deaths of 65 people.

The spokesperson for the Prosecutor's Office did not rule out laying other charges in the future – depending on facts established by experts on causes of the building's collapse.

A judge is quoted as saying that immediately after the catastrophe the accused destroyed some vital documents and there exists a possibility that if they were released on bail they would intimidate witnesses to change their testimonies.

After interviewing some 200 witnesses, the analysis of company documents, experts' findings and data from the company's computers (some of which was recovered by computer specialists) the prosecutors allege that the accused were responsible for failing to remove heavy snow and ice from the building's roof, and also that in the past, the roof had gotten damaged and yet they carried out only emergency repairs and did not report the damage to a building inspector as required by Polish law.

A spokesperson for the Tax Office refuted this claim saying that only some of the company's cash was seized and amounts remaining should have been more than sufficient to pay for snow and ice removal.

Both were aware of the fact that in January 2000 the roof buckled under the weight of the snow, yet they did not take any steps to remedy the situation and perhaps prevent the tragedy.

On 14 February 2007, the Court of Appeal in Katowice granted bail to the three top bosses of the company – Bruce Robinson, Ryszard Ziółek, and Adam Hildebrandt.

Emails recovered from seized computers proved that members of the Board of Directors were fully aware of the problems and of an expert's recommendation that snow be removed from the roof and that the design was verified.

One of the indicted, technical coordinator Piotr I., was charged with failing to order the evacuation doors to be opened; he is the only one that pleaded guilty.