Brazil’s Ministerio Publico Federal (MPF), a body of public prosecutors, has opened a criminal probe against Samarco’s current CEO, Roberto Lucio Nunes de Carvalho, for alleged illicit behavior related to the Mariana disaster.
According to MPF, Samarco hasn’t fully complied with any emergency precautionary measures required by Brazil’s environment authority, Ibama, eight months following the Mariana disaster, which killed 19 people in November last year.
The prosecutors said the dismissive behavior of Carvalho could result in environmental crimes, adding pressure to the struggling company, which has postponed its restart plans for 2017. The company also needs to raise an estimated BRL 20 billion to fund the clean-up costs of the affected areas.
According to a report by Ibama, Samarco failed to contain 24.8 million cubic meters of iron ore waste, which are still spread over the affected areas and account for 77 percent of the total waste spilled by the Fundao dam in November 2015. Ibama gave Samarco 11 precautionary measures to be followed. Since then, Samarco has partially complied with four of them and “completely ignored” the other seven.
MPF has also said that both Vale and BHP are co-responsible for the disaster.
Samarco is expected to join a court hearing on September 13, 2016, which seek a conciliation for a lawsuit filed by MPF, in which the prosecutors ask BRL 155 billion for the damages caused by Samarco as a result of the Mariana disaster.