Judge freezes miner Vale’s assets after burst dam kills 58 in Brazil
Prosecutors in Brazil have seized over £2bn in assets from Vale to ensure the miner patches up a dam which burst on Friday, killing over 50 people.
Hundreds are still missing, presumed dead, after mud and water buried homes and mining facilities in the town of Brumadinho.
While search and rescue missions continue, judges in Belo Horizonte and Brumadinho granted prosecutors’ requests for so-called attachments against 11bn reais (£2.2bn) in Vale bank accounts.
The order freezes Vale’s access to the cash so it can be used to pay anticipated damages.
The company was also hit by administrative sanctions totalling around 350m reais by Brazilian authorities.
Judges said Vale must ensure the dam at the Corrego do Feijao mine is stable, and help look after those displaced by the flood.
Yesterday the company’s board suspended planned payouts to shareholders, share buybacks and executive bonuses.
Chief executive Fabio Schvartsman said Vale had followed recommendations from safety experts.
“I’m not a mining technician. I followed the technicians’ advice and you see what happened. It didn’t work,” Schvartsman said. “We are 100 per cent within all the standards, and that didn’t do it.”
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He said Vale will now “go above and beyond any national or international standards. […] We will create a cushion of safety far superior to what we have today to guarantee this never happens again.”
However, the accident comes less than four years after a dam collapsed at a separate iron mine run by a Vale-BHP joint venture. The collapse, just 60 miles east of Corrego do Feijao, buried a small village in toxic mud, killing 19 and sparking the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history as it leaked into a nearby river.