Mining giant with Swiss ties fined for dam failure in Brazil

People protest against the mining company Vale in front of the main office Vale International, the world's largest producer of iron ore and nickel, in Saint-Prex, Switzerland, Monday, October 14, 2019. People demonstratate against Vale after the mine tailings dam, owned by Vale, collapse tragedy that killed 233 people in the municipality of Brumadinho in Brazil. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

Mining groups Samarco, BHP and Brazilian mining giant Vale, which has its administrative headquarters in St Prex in canton Vaud, will have to pay the equivalent of 46.7 billion reals (CHF8.4 billion) for the damage caused by the 2015 failure of a tailings dam in Brazil, a court ruled on Thursday. To this amount must be added interest since 2015.

“BHP, Vale and Samarco were ordered to pay compensation for collective moral damages, due to the violation of the human rights of the affected communities”, the ruling said. The disaster, which occurred on November 5, 2015, is considered to be the worst environmental tragedy in Brazil’s history.

The Belo Horizonte federal court judge ordered that the sum be paid into a fund administered by the Brazilian government and used for projects and initiatives in the affected areas.

+ Data leak implicates Swiss mining company in pollution coverup

As a result of the accident, “communities have suffered repercussions in their housing, work and personal relationships”, but also “people have died” and “there has been environmental degradation”, he stressed.

Victims not compensated

The decision may be appealed. The victims’ claims for individual compensation were rejected “for technical reasons”.

Last May, the British courts postponed from April to October 2024 the trial against Australian mining giant BHP for its responsibility in the pollution caused by the 2015 bursting of a dam in the town of Mariana, in central Brazil.

In March 2023, the law firm Pogust Goodhead reported an “unprecedented increase” in the number of plaintiffs it was defending: more than 700,000 victims claiming a total of £36 billion (CHF39.7 billion) in damages. BHP was co-owner, with the Brazilian group Vale, of the Brazilian mining company Samarco, which managed the dam.

+ Switzerland – a trading paradise?

The dam burst near the town of Mariana, in the south eastern state of Minas Gerais, releasing a gigantic mudslide that completely submerged the village of Bento Rodrigues, killing 19 people and leaving more than 600 homeless.

The mudslide then spread 650 kilometres across the Rio Doce riverbed to the Atlantic Ocean, killing thousands of animals and devastating areas of protected tropical forest.

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here. 

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].