Brazil Court Orders Deposit for Future Damages in Dam Collapse
November 11 2016 - 8:26AM
Dow Jones News
By Benjamin Parkin
RIO DE JANEIRO--Troubled Brazilian miner Samarco Mineração SA
and its shareholders Vale SA and BHP Billiton Ltd. have been
ordered to deposit 1.2 billion reais ($348 million) to guarantee
future damage payments after last year's fatal dam collapse, Vale
said Friday.
A Brazilian court ordered Samarco and its shareholders to make
the payment within 30 days, also giving them 90 days to prove that
leakage from the Fundão tailings dam have stopped definitively and
six months to present a plan to clean up waste from the
failure.
The dam collapse at the company's iron ore operation in November
2015 killed 19 people and resulted in the country's worst-ever
environmental disaster, polluting more than 400 miles of
waterway.
Samarco, staring at billions in possible reparatory payments,
has struggled to raise cash after Brazilian authorities yanked its
environmental licenses and its activities ground to a halt. The
company reached a tentative settlement with the Brazilian
government in March, only to see federal prosecutors file a 155
billion real ($45 billion) lawsuit against the company two months
later.
Vale and BHP have agreed to help Samarco in covering costs of
repairing the social and environmental damages from the
collapse.
"Vale will adopt all measures to guarantee its right of defense
within the legal period and will continue to support Samarco to
accomplish reparatory measures," said Vale in Friday's securities
filing.
Samarco and BHP did not immediately respond to requests for
comment.
Write to Benjamin Parkin at Benjamin.Parkin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 11, 2016 08:11 ET (13:11 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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