ESG Securities Fraud

The 2019 collapse of the Brumadinho dam in Brazil not only released 12 million tons of mining waste and took 270 lives, it prompted the filing of a major securities fraud enforcement case in the United States by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). Vale, the public corporation that owned the dam, had New York Stock Exchange-traded securities, which lost 25 percent of their value in the wake of the crisis. The government lawsuit argued that Vale misled investors about the risk of its 2019 dam collapse, not only in the quarterly reports it must file with the SEC as a public company, but also in sustainability reports that it had voluntarily provided to investors.