Brumadinho Dam: Court maintains case against four employees

The STJ (Supreme Court of Justice) rejected the request of professionals from Vale and TÜV SÜD to suspend criminal proceedings against them in relation to the collapse of the Córrego do Feijão Mine dam, in Brumadinho (MG), in 2019.

Following this denial, the four professionals from both companies remain under investigation related to the 272 deaths and several environmental crimes that occurred after the disaster.

According to the indictment, three TÜV SÜD employees would have participated in issuing declarations of stability of the dam, even after indication of probable insecurity related to the stability of the barrier.

Furthermore, a Vale engineer allegedly failed to take into account the risks of the structure and emergency measures, in addition to obtaining the supposedly irregular stability declarations.

According to the rapporteur, Minister Sebastião Reis Júnior, from the Sixth Panel of the STJ, there are no probative reasons to withdraw the charges related to the employees. Furthermore, the judge considered that the defendants failed to act in relation to the dangerous state of the dam, including putting it in danger with declarations of stability.

CNN Brasil contacted the companies mentioned. The space remains open.

What do the defenses say?
The defenses of the accused stated that the indictment document would be inept, because, according to a Federal Police report, it was possible to conclude that the cause of the rupture occurred due to the drilling of the dam with water injection. In other words, for lawyers, there was no premeditated risk.

Brumadinho: tragedy completes five years with no culprits identified | LIVE CNN

The judges of the Sixth Panel, however, rejected the allegation raised by the defendants' defense, understanding that the PF report only added a technical element to the complaint that already demonstrated the instabilities previously proven by professional inspections.

The rapporteur also reinforced that there is still no evidence of imminent arrest of the accused, which is not the authority's responsibility to interfere in the process. For minister Sebastião Reis Júnior, "the suspension of actions at this moment would represent an unjustified setback."

Brumadinho disaster
On January 25, 2019, the Córrego do Feijão dam, in Brumadinho, broke and killed 272 people (270 dead and two unborn children). With the disaster, kilometers of fauna and flora on the bed of the Paraopeba River basin were devastated and contaminated, becoming one of the biggest environmental disasters in the country.

The collapse spread approximately 10.5 million cubic meters of mud, in addition to reaching a volume of waste equivalent to more than 4,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

On February 4, 2021, the Damage Compensation Agreement for those affected by the breach was signed by the MPMG (Public Ministry of Minas Gerais), MPF (Federal Public Ministry), Public Defender's Office of Minas Gerais and the state government.

To this day, seven years later, no one has been punished for the case. The cases are still ongoing in court.

*Under the supervision of Carolina Figueiredo

Source: CNN