State prosecutors in Brazil have charged Fabio Schvartsman, the former chief executive of the mining company Vale, and 15 other people with homicide in connection with a tailings dam disaster last January that killed more than 250 people. Jamie Kneen... communications and outreach coordinator with MiningWatch Canada... [said] "We really need an independent third party with a lot of clout and credibility to have the authority to go in and investigate and look at the engineering but also the ground conditions... The liability is there in the sense that those structures are fairly technically designed and executed... And in this case, there were signs of instability and it was allowed to continue."... Kneen explained that the charges are specific to the Brazilian operation. "But I hope that it has a larger effect in making the company much more attentive to its own engineers and its own internal reporting, but also to the demands of the community," he added.

... A spokesperson for Vale shared a statement from the Vale press office in Brazil, which reads in part: It is important to note that other authorities are investigating the case and, at this point, it is premature to claim there was conscious assumption of risk to cause a deliberate breach of the dam. Vale trusts in the complete clarification of the causes of the breach and reaffirms its commitment to continue to fully co-operate with the authorities.