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Mining groups BHP and Vale on Friday signed a landmark R$132bn ($23bn) settlement with authorities in Brazil to provide further reparations and cover damages stemming from the 2015 Mariana dam disaster.
The agreement seeks to draw a line under years of wrangling over compensation for the incident in the south-eastern state of Minas Gerais, which killed 19 people and caused extensive environmental damage. The settlement will take the mining companies’ indemnity bill to around $30bn.
“These resources will allow us to do justice in reparations to the families directly affected,” Jorge Messias, Brazil’s attorney-general, said after announcing the agreement.
The settlement comes just days after the High Court in London began hearing a separate multibillion-pound lawsuit brought against the two miners on behalf of about 620,000 alleged victims.
The plaintiffs, including 2,000 businesses, 46 municipalities and 65 faith-based organisations, previously put the value of their claims at $36bn, before interest and inflation.
The case is among the most complex of a new breed of high-value lawsuits hitting the English courts, fuelled in part by the rise in recent years of funds that specialise in financing litigation.
The Mariana disaster occurred in November 2015 when a structure holding mining waste ruptured, unleashing an avalanche of mud that killed 19, swamped villages and contaminated hundreds of kilometres of waterways all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
Four years after the disaster, another of these so-called tailings dams operated by Vale ruptured and collapsed in the nearby Brumadinho township of Minas Gerais, killing 270 people.
Additional reporting by Beatriz Langella