WASHINGTON—U.S. securities regulators on Thursday sued Brazilian mining company Vale SA over how the company disclosed its mining-safety practices before one of its dams collapsed in 2019, a disaster that killed 270 people and continues to cloud the company’s future.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit shows how the regulator is using investor-protection powers to go after public companies that suffered costly environmental or engineering crises. The January 2019 dam collapse near the town of Brumadinho in southeastern Brazil cost Vale at least $7 billion in legal payments and significant additional future costs to take down other structures that have the same upstream construction design as the Brumadinho dam.
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