Mining giants sign $30 billion settlement over 2015 Brazil dam collapse

President Lula said: “I hope the mining companies have learned their lesson; it would have cost them less to prevent the disaster.”

The dam was owned by Samarco, a joint venture between Vale and BHP.

Since the disaster, companies have created a foundation to compensate people, which has already made billions of dollars worth of repairs. This included building a new city to replace one of the cities that was destroyed.

However, many people in the community continued to argue that they had not received justice or enough to rebuild their lives nine years later.

Aside from these legal proceedings in Brazil, more than 620,000 people had taken BHP to court in the United Kingdom, where BHP was based at the time, in a trial that began earlier this week.

They are asking for about $47 billion in damages in the civil suit. The first stage will determine whether BHP, as the parent company, was liable. Around 70,000 whistleblowers are also suing Vale in court in the Netherlands.

Both companies deny responsibility and argue that this legal action abroad is “unnecessary” and duplicates legal procedures in Brazil.