The president of the (Supreme Federal Court), was criticized by those affected for having said, in , that they would give them “to spend a good weekend”.
In the session, this Wednesday (6), Barroso said that he did not go into the merits of the agreement because adherence was voluntary.
“Therefore, whoever is satisfied joins, whoever is not satisfied will fight on their own,” said the president of the Supreme Court, before adding that the agreement “seemed like a good solution.”
“And I thought that the volume of resources that companies were willing to contribute, minister [Cristiano] Zanin, it was a very relevant volume. R$170 billion is not a small amount, it’s enough to spend a good weekend”, he said, laughing. “I think it was a very expressive number of arduous negotiations.”
The collapse of the Fundão dam, in Mariana, left 19 people dead and waste in the environment.
Technical advisor Monica Santos, 39, who lost her house in Bento Rodrigues (MG) in the tragedy, criticized Barroso’s statements. “Because of the position he holds, because of the position he holds, he could never have made a statement like that. He would never have had to ratify the agreement without knowing our reality,” he told the Panel.
“The agreement did not take into account everything we have been going through in these nine years. My family is still homeless, my family is still not being compensated. The people who are deciding about our lives didn’t even listen to us”, he adds.
Another affected person, businessman Edertone José da Silva, 57, from Governador Valadares (MG), also said he regretted the sentence said by the minister. “It was ironic and insensitive even to people’s pain, because he doesn’t know our reality here.” He had a sand extraction company that went bankrupt after the disaster.
Both Monica and Edertone are party to a lawsuit that asks for, and represented by the British firm Pogust Goodhead. They reject the compensation agreement that was reached in Brazil and had the participation of the Federal Supreme Court.
Through the advice of the STF, Barroso said that he did not refer to the victims and reinforced a statement he made at the end of the trial.
“I would like, on behalf of the court, to send a message of affection and solidarity to the victims of the Fundão dam collapse accident in Mariana, Minas Gerais. People who lost their homes, their belongings and their memories, I would say. Money, for Obviously, it is not enough to build everything or rebuild everything that was lost, but it is often the possible compensation. It is the most we can do at this point”, he stated.
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