Final inquiry report draft calls out “predatory” Braskem mining

Senator Rogério Carvalho on Wednesday presented his draft final report to the Senate select committee set up to investigate abusive salt mining practices by Braskem, Latin America’s largest petrochemical company. The report will be put to a vote next week. 

The report, running 765 pages long, suggests that police authorities should investigate Braskem’s current executive vice president, Marcelo Cerqueira, and seven other people formerly affiliated with Braskem, for environmental crimes. Mr. Cerqueira spoke to the inquiry on Tuesday, when he claimed that the company had respected extraction limits.

The draft final report says that Braskem carried out “predatory” salt mining in the northeastern Brazilian city of Maceió, and that the company itself should be investigated for illegally exploring federal resources, as well as for the environmental crimes of pollution, harvesting minerals without a permit, and building or renovating a potentially polluting facility without the required license.

Mr. Carvalho added that Braskem lied to officials.

“We conclude that Braskem (…) was aware of the possibility of soil subsidence and yet deliberately decided to take the risk of exploring the caves beyond their safe production capacity. Furthermore, so that it could keep the continuity and pace of rock salt extraction, it inserted false information in public documents, omitted essential data from technical reports, and manipulated oversight bodies. As if these crimes were not enough, [Braskem] failed to inform authorities and adopt security measures that could have prevented the sinking of the ground and the evacuation of five neighborhoods of Maceió.”

The report also points fingers at inspectors and other officials at the National Mining Agency (ANM) and the Mines and Energy Ministry for failing to do their jobs, but stops short of requesting a police investigation, instead arguing more evidence would be needed for that.

According to Mr. Carvalho, Braskem’s behavior “could only occur because regulatory bodies failed to fulfill their oversight duty.” Licenses were granted “based on reports provided or ordered by the company itself, without any verification,” he wrote. Officials “neglected data” that indicated soil subsidence in the early 2000s, when Braskem took up mining in the region.

Braskem’s salt mining in Maceió led to Brazil’s largest urban environmental disaster in history. Experts estimate that more than 60,000 people have been forced to leave their homes and businesses since 2018.

As The Brazilian Report showed in an award-winning in-depth investigation in 2021, Braskem’s salt mining destabilized subterranean caves underneath neighborhoods in Maceió, leading to the collapse of houses and even large apartment buildings.

The Senate’s select committee had a first significant development in April, when a Braskem representative admitted for the first time to the company’s responsibility for the geological disaster. Braskem director Marcelo Arantes told senators that the company was “to blame for this process, and we take responsibility for it.” Mr. Arantes is not included in the report as among those responsible for the disaster.

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