LatinNews Daily - 26 January 2024

*A federal judge in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state has ordered Brazilian mining giant Vale, Australian mining company BHP, and their joint venture Samarco to pay R$47.6bn (US$9.7bn) in “collective moral damages” for the high-profile social and environmental disaster in 2015 resulting from a Samarco-operated tailings dam bursting near the town of Mariana, Minas Gerais. Vale has also faced renewed pressure over another dam disaster which occurred on 25 January 2019 near Brumadinho, Minas Gerais. According to state news agency Agência Brasil, demonstrators took to the streets in Brumadinho to mark the five-year anniversary of the disaster and criticised the 2021 settlement agreed by Vale and state authorities. Agência Brasil cited the association of the Brumadinho dam disaster victims’ families (Avabrum) as calling for criminal convictions. Prosecutors have pressed charges against Vale executives in relation to the Brumadinho disaster, but none have been convicted. Writing on social media on 25 January, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed solidarity with the Brumadinho and Mariana victims and alleged that “Vale has not done anything to compensate for the destruction”.

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