If it's true that the company had no backups of their production database, then the engineer was nearly blameless. The CTO should have been fired. If there was no CTO, then the Board Of Directors should have asked the CEO why they felt they were competent to run a software company without a CTO. If the CEO was technical enough to take responsibility for technical decisions, then the CEO should have been fired or severely reprimanded.
If a software company is making money, but developers develop against the production database, and there are no backups, then its the leadership that is at fault. The leadership deserves severe criticism.