Vale’s failed promises on mining in indigenous lands

On Friday, Brazil’s Federal Police indicted 19 people and two companies on 270 counts of murder for the Brumadinho dam failure in January 2019. The dam at the Córrego Feijão mine had been cleared for operations despite severe structural flaws, resulting in a complete collapse that killed 273 people, left another eight missing, and spilled waves of toxic sludge into the surrounding region.

As well as murder, marshals are also investigating a variety of environmental crimes, such as polluting and harming lands and marine life, damaging water resources, conservation units, and archeological sites — as well as one count of fraudulent misrepresentation to the National Mining Agency (ANM).

Brazil’s mining giant Vale — in charge of the dam — was among the companies and people indicted, along with German auditing firm TÜV SÜD and 19 individuals who worked for both corporations as consultants, engineers, managers, and officers.

Vale has also been identified as one of the guilty parties in the mining field’s biggest environmental disaster in history, which occurred in the Brazilian city of Mariana, just around 90 kilometers from Brumadinho, in 2015. Along with British-Australian firm BHP, Vale is one of the parent companies of Samarco, which oversaw a dam that collapsed and caused a deluge of sludge to wash over the surrounding region, irreversibly poisoning the Rio Doce basin and killing 19 people.

Since this pair of tragedies, Vale announced a...