Brazil iron miner Samarco sued for billions in disaster that killed 19 people

Federal prosecutors in Brazil have filed a 155bn-authentic ($43.5bn) civil lawsuit against iron miner Samarco, and its owners Vale SA and BHP Billiton, for the collapse of a tailings dam in November that killed 19 people and polluted a major river.
The lawsuit, which is additionally against the two states impacted by the spill and the federal regime, is the result of a six-month investigation led by a task force set up after the disaster, prosecutors verbally expressed in a verbalization. Vale verbally expressed it had not been notified of the suit and was ergo unable to comment. BHP did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The total damages, they verbally expressed, were calculated predicated upon the cost of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Coalesced States. BP’s total pre-tax charge for that spill reached $53.8bn. Prosecutors authoritatively mandated an initial payment of 7.7bn reais. The civil action is discrete from the lawsuit that Samarco, Vale and BHP settled with Brazil’s regime in March in which the companies would pay an estimated 20bn reais for damage caused by the spill. Federal and verbalize prosecutors did not compose part of that settlement.