The Vale employees arrested on Friday were responsible for the security and stability of the Brumadinho dam

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Brazilian police have arrested eight employees of mining company Vale SA accused by state prosecutors of covering up weaknesses at a dam that collapsed and likely killed more than 300 people.

Police also carried out 14 search warrants as part of the investigation, prosecutors in the mining state of Minas Gerais said.

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The arrests and search warrants targeted employees of Vale as well as employees of German auditing firm TÜV SÜD, which had certified the dam as stable.

Vale confirmed the arrest warrants and said in a securities filing it was cooperating with the investigation.

The tailings dam in the town of Brumadinho burst on 25 January, killing at least 166 people. Almost 200 more are still missing.

“The eight Vale employees … had full knowledge of the situation of instability in the dam and each one of them, as part of their job, also had the power and ability to adopt measures for either stabilizing the structure or evacuating areas at risk,” a judge in Minas Gerais wrote in an arrest warrant, issued in response to a petition from the state prosecutor’s office.

Vale said in a securities filing it was cooperating with the investigation.

The latest warrants followed the arrest last month of five Vale and TÜV SÜD employees, who were released by a higher court ruling on 5 February.

The most senior Vale employees arrested on Friday were Joaquim Toledo, the executive director of geotechnical operations, who led the team tasked with monitoring the dam’s stability, and Alexandre Campanha, the executive corporate director of geotechnicals.

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No top Vale executives have been arrested.

Also arrested was Hélio Márcio Lopes da Cerqueira, who was allegedly involved in email correspondence about faulty monitoring equipment at the mine, according to newspaper Estado de S Paulo.

Neither Campanha nor Cerqueira could not be reached immediately for comment.

The company’s chief executive officer, Fabio Schvartsman, said on Thursday, in response to questions from lawmakers, that the company’s safety procedures had not worked.

Tailings are the mud-like byproducts, including finely groundrock particles, left over from mining and extracting mineral resources.