Observatório das Ações Penais

Processes Germany

Five Brazilian women, relatives of the fatal victims of the collapse of the Vale S.A. dam in Brumadinho, filed a complaint against Tüv Süd with the Munich prosecutor’s office, the headquarters of the certification company in Germany, in October 2019 – nine months after the collapse of the dam that had received a stability certificate from its Brazilian subsidiary Tüv Süd Bureau de Projetos e Consultoria LTDA.

The complaint calls for the criminal liability of TÜV SÜD’s parent company and corporate executives to be investigated, because the certifier did not prevent its Brazilian subsidiary from issuing the stability declaration, even though it was aware that the safety factor in the Córrego do Feijão I dam was well below the minimum acceptable under international standards, as well as by the practice of Vale S.A. and TÜV themselves. The charges are directed against a TÜV SÜD employee for the crimes of negligence causing a flood, homicide and corruption. The company is accused of having violated its duty of supervision – as it had an obligation to prevent any crimes from being committed within the company.

The German organizations Misereor and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) also filed the complaint.

In October 2024, it will be five years since the complaint was filed. The investigations are nearing completion. It is up to the German Public Prosecutor’s Office to decide whether to open criminal proceedings in German court or to drop the complaint.

Credit: Personal archive

 

Check out one of the documents below, from 2019, with questions and answers about this action.