Oil producer Shell and German chemical company BASF agreed on Monday to pay compensation that could reach 620 million reais ($316 million) to workers exposed over three decades to toxic chemicals at a Brazil plant, prosecutors said. Labor prosecutors say chemical contamination killed 60
Tue Mar 12, 2013 3:23am GMT
* Labor prosecutors say chemical contamination killed 60
* Government shut down pesticide plant in 2002
* Shell doubts link between chemicals, worker injury
By Peter Murphy
BRASILIA, March 11 (Reuters) – Oil producer Shell and German chemical company BASF agreed on Monday to pay compensation that could reach 620 million reais ($316 million) to workers exposed over three decades to toxic chemicals at a Brazil plant, prosecutors said.
Brazil’s public labor prosecution service said 60 people were killed from prolonged exposure to chemicals used to make pesticides at the plant. The factory began operating in the 1970s in Paulinia in Sao Paulo state until government authorities ordered it to shut down in 2002.
The companies have agreed to pay individual compensation to 1,068 former workers at the plant and provide them with lifetime medical care, which prosecutors estimated could total up to 420 million reais.
Shell and BASF would also make a separate 200 million reais payment for collective moral damages which would be used to build a maternity clinic in Paulinia and for donations to special health centers.
Shell has maintained throughout the case, brought in 2007, that it believed there was no link between the operations at the plant and injury to workers’ health, but it said it regretted the environmental contamination that occurred.
Seventy-six workers pursuing individual court action must also decide within 30 days whether to take the compensation offer which would require them to drop their own cases.
Shell built and operated the factory until it sold it to chemicals company Cyanamid in 1995, which in turn sold it to BASF in 2000. BASF produced pesticides at the plant for only two years before it was shut down.
Shell became the owner of the site again in 2008 when it bought it from BASF but the plant remains shut.
Spokespeople for Shell and BASF based in Brazil confirmed the two companies had agreed to the compensation deal, whose total amount would be worked out over the next 10 days.
Gislaine Rossetti, a spokeswoman at BASF, told Reuters the companies would not disclose the proportion of the total compensation each would pay. Shell would be solely responsible for reparations linked to soil pollution, she said.
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
MORE DETAILS:
A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
