BHP called out for Voice ‘hypocrisy’ after Brazil disaster

afr.com:

UK lawyers behind a $70 billion class action against BHP over the Samarco mine disaster will lobby Australian politicians, super funds and investors this week ahead of a major shareholder meeting for the mining giant.

Tom Goodhead, chief executive of London-based law firm Pogust Goodhead, was in Australia earlier in May, but has returned this week with some of his 700,000 claimants, including representatives of the Brazilian Indigenous community, to intensify pressure on the miner over its support for the Indigenous Voice to parliament.

Members of Brazilian Indigenous tribes who have protested against BHP in London have come to Australia. 

BHP and its partner Vale are also facing a £30 billion ($59 billion) claim from Brazilian prosecutors over the Samarco iron ore mine dam collapse in 2015, which released a torrent of toxic mud that killed 19 people and wiped out 700 homes.

Local class action lawyers Maurice Blackburn and Phi Finney McDonald have brought a separate case, which claims BHP breached continuous disclosure obligations and engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct, bringing total claims against BHP linked to the disaster to over $100 billion.

While BHP’s annual report last year estimated the damage bill at $US3.3 billion, its latest annual report admits it cannot quantify the cost. BHP last month reported a 37 per cent slump in underlying profit to $US13.4 billion.

The touring party, which includes representatives of Brazil’s Krenak Indigenous community, will meet MPs and crossbenchers in Canberra and travel to Sydney and BHP’s headquarters in Melbourne, where they will meet unions, super funds and investors, along with local Indigenous representatives. They will seek to highlight what they say is the