Brazilian state prosecutors will
announce a complaint against Vale SA, a contractor and 16 individuals for
crimes related to the massive dam collapse that killed more than 250 people in
Brazil last January.
The prosecutors tweeted about
their plans and announced a press conference for 3 p.m. local time. The
Brumadinho disaster sent a deluge of mud down a mountainside in Brazil’s
biggest environmental catastrophe. The incident resulted in the Vale chief
executive officer stepping down and spurred Brazil’s government to review
mining operations, especially the dams that are responsible for mining waste
held in huge ponds.
The charges will include
homicide, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unidentified person
familiar with the investigation. The charges include executives, the newspaper
said, without providing more details.
Vale’s American depositary
receipts tumbled 1.8% to $13.39 at 11:52 a.m. in New York, poised for the
biggest decline this year.
In October, Vale said it has posted $6.3 billion in expenses related
to the rupture, which severely cut production and sent iron-ore prices on a
rollercoaster. The company lost about a fourth of its market value in the
immediate aftermath, but it has since largely recovered.
A report released in December
from a panel of experts commissioned by Vale blamed faulty design for the dam’s
collapse. The facility was too steep and had insufficient drainage, resulting
in high water levels that put stress on the structure, according to the report.
It was not the first collapse of
a Brazilian tailings dam. On Nov. 5, 2015, a tailings dam operated by a venture
co-owned by Vale burst near a Mariana municipality, killing 19. Prosecutors
filed charges against 21 people in 2016 as a result.
In September, Brazilian police
indicted Vale, the testing service TUV SUD and 13 employees of the two
companies for producing misleading documents about the safety of the dam that
buried the community of Brumadinho, in Minas Gerais state.