Vale S.A.

Dam B1 did not fail for want of signatures. It failed after a long record of marginal stability, incomplete risk communication and paid assurance had been compressed into declarations that travelled farther through Vale, the regulator and the market than the uncertainty beneath them. The durable accountability question is therefore not whether an engineer signed a form, but whether any institution outside the operating chain had the evidence, authority and independence to convert doubt into drainage, closure, relocation or evacuation before 25 January 2019.