Prosecutors in Brazil accuse 21 of homicide in 2015 dam collapse
that killed 19 people
By Paul Kiernan
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil -- Brazilian federal prosecutors filed
homicide charges Thursday against 21 people in connection with a
catastrophic collapse of a mining dam last year that killed 19
people.
Those charged include current and former top executives of
mining giants Vale SA and BHP Billiton Ltd. and their joint
venture, Samarco Mineração SA. Among them are former Samarco Chief
Executive Ricardo Vescovi, Vale's current iron-ore director Peter
Poppinga, and eight Vale and BHP representatives at Samarco.
The charges mark the end of a nearly yearlong criminal
investigation into the Nov. 5, 2015, failure of Samarco's Fundão
tailings dam in southeast Brazil.
Believed to be the biggest disaster of its kind anywhere, the
incident released a torrent of sludge that washed away villages,
displaced hundreds of people and traveled more than 400 miles
through southeast Brazil's Rio Doce basin before reaching the
Atlantic Ocean. Almost a year later, the river is still tainted a
rusty red from sediment, its washed-out banks visible from the
cruising altitude of commercial airliners.
Additional charges against the 21 individuals include the crimes
of causing a flood, landslide and grave bodily harm. Vale, BHP and
Samarco were also charged with 12 different kinds of environmental
crimes. Employees of a consulting firm that performed periodic
checkups on Fundão were charged with presenting false stability
reports.
In an emailed statement, Samarco said it "refutes" the charges
and said the prosecutors ignored defense statements that it
presented over the course of the investigation, "which prove that
the company had no prior knowledge of the risks to its
structure."
"Safety was always a priority in the management strategy of
Samarco, which reiterates that it never reduced investments in this
area," the company added.
BHP Billiton said it "rejects outright the charges against the
company and the affected individuals. We will defend the charges
against the company, and fully support each of the affected
individuals in their defense of the charges against them."
Vale reaffirmed its "deep respect and total solidarity" with the
disaster's victims but said it "vehemently repudiates" the charges
filed Thursday. It added that its representatives on Samarco's
board confirmed that they "were never informed by Samarco's
technical or leadership team of any irregularities that could have
represented real or untreated risks to the dam, nor by any
consultancy responsible for monitoring the structure."
The individual defendants couldn't be reached.
If convicted of "qualified homicide," the individuals could face
sentences of between 12 and 30 years in prison, prosecutors said,
adding that Brazil has extradition agreements with most or all of
the countries from which the suspects hail.
"[The victims] were killed by the violent passage of the
tailings mud, they had their bodies thrown against other objects,
such as pieces of wood, they had their bodies mutilated
and...dispersed across an area of 110 kilometers," federal
prosecutor Eduardo Santos de Oliveira said at a press conference.
"The motivation of the homicides was the excessive greed of the
companies -- Samarco, here charged, as well as its shareholders --
in the name of profit."
Potential penalties for Vale, BHP and Samarco range from payment
of fines and funding of charitable programs to partial or total
suspension of their activities. Prosecutors added that they
requested damage payments for the victims, the amount of which
remains to be determined.
A judge must accept the charges for a trial, which would take
place before a jury, to begin.
In a report released in August, the companies presented a report
on the factors that contributed to Fundão's failure.
All three firms have apologized for the disaster and committed
to a full remediation of the damage. But Brazilian courts rejected
a March settlement signed by the companies and the government.
Prosecutors are seeking to replace it with a civil lawsuit filed in
May in which they sought 155 billion reais ($49 billion) in damages
and compared the Samarco disaster to BP's Deepwater Horizon oil
spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The prosecutors' case hinges what they say is evidence that
Samarco and its shareholders were aware of chronic structural
problems at Fundão dating back to April 2009. They say Samarco's
board -- made up of Vale and BHP officials -- was informed of flaws
in the dam but responded by pressuring the company to extract more
iron ore.
Samarco's board was also allegedly informed of the likely
consequences of a dam failure, prosecutors said. Company risk
managers allegedly had estimated as recently as 2015, according to
prosecutors, that a collapse of Fundão could kill 20 people, stop
Samarco's operations for two years and deal a substantial blow to
the mining companies' reputations.
Surviving residents of the devastated community of Bento
Rodrigues reported after the accident that they received no
official warning from Samarco in the crucial minutes after the dam
gave way.
"There were internal committees, operational committees, dam
committees, in which the issues were discussed, and on those
committees there were representatives of Vale and BHP," prosecutor
José Adércio Leite Sampaio said. "Based on the minutes, on what was
debated in those minutes, on the documents that were presented at
those meetings, we identified the list of people on the charge
sheet."
Write to Paul Kiernan at paul.kiernan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 21, 2016 02:48 ET (06:48 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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