Belo Horizonte (Brazil) (AFP)

The mining group Vale, the German certification company TUV SUD and 16 officials of the two companies were charged on Tuesday for the breach of the Brumadinho dam, which killed 270 people a year ago.

The public prosecutor's office of the state of Minas Gerais (south-east) requested the indictment of Fabio Schvartsman, ex-boss of Vale, as well as 15 other people related to the mining company or to TUV SUD, for "intentional homicide" and "environmental crime". They face 12 to 30 years in prison.

Environmental criminals have also been charged with the two companies.

Vale and TUV SUD "have imposed a risk on society (...) by acting in concert to systematically hide the real gravity of the dam situation," said prosecutor William Garcia Pinto Coelho, stressing that "false certificates of stability "had been issued.

He added that Fabio Schvartsman had "taken unacceptable risks to create a false impression of security" and to avoid financial losses for the company.

"They went out of their way to ensure that the image of the company was not jeopardized in relation to its shareholders," said attorney general Antônio Sérgio Tonet.

The prosecutor also explained that Vale had a kind of "black box consisting in hiding information on the unacceptable risks posed by its roadblocks".

- "Sad coincidence" -

A report from the National Mines Agency (ANM) in November already accused Vale of having failed to inform the authorities of anomalies which, if they had been reported, "could have avoided the disaster" .

The ANM notably stressed that the information it had received from Vale before the dam broke "did not agree with the elements presented in internal documents of the mining group".

Vale said in a statement that he was "puzzled over the charges of intentional homicide", saying that it was "premature to speak of conscious risk taking to cause the deliberate breach of the dam".

TUV SUD, which certified the stability of the Brumadinho dam, said it was "deeply saddened" by the tragedy, but considered that the "real causes" had "still not been clarified".

On the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange, the title of Vale sold Tuesday 2.40% shortly before closing.

After the dam broke, the world's number one iron ore producer had lost a quarter of its market capitalization, but it wiped out all of its losses in one year.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that the indictment took place a year after the disaster, a "sad coincidence".

The dam failure released millions of tonnes of mine tailings which engulfed an entire region and caused a major ecological disaster.

A year after the tragedy, 259 bodies were found in the ocean of toxic mud and firefighters continue to search for the 11 bodies still buried.

Across the country, Brumadinho dams - whose height increases with the accumulation of mine tailings - will have to be dismantled by 2023.

Vale has already started paying compensation to the victims, amounting to two billion reais (435 million euros).

The company had previously been involved in another such tragedy.

On November 5, 2015, the Fundao dam, managed by Samarco, a joint venture of the Brazilian group and the Anglo-Australian BHP, had brutally released 40 million cubic meters of highly toxic waste into the wild, causing 19 deaths and causing unprecedented environmental damage in Brazil.

© 2020 AFP