(Adds information on lawsuit) RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Brazilian miner Vale plans to spend about 7.8 billion reais ($1.53billion) this year on repairs related to the deadly collapse ofa tailings dam in the mining town of Brumadinho, a companyexecutive told Reuters on Wednesday. The spending plan comes on the same day that Brazil'sSupreme Court ordered lower courts to immediately startprocessing a lawsuit that aims to establish who was responsiblefor the nearly four-year-old disaster, citing a fast approachinglegal deadline. One of Brazil's worst mining disasters in years, the ruptureunleashed a wave of mud killing 270 people, while damaginghomes, forests and rivers. Marcelo Klein, Vale's reparations and territorialdevelopment head, said that 3.9 billion reais of the spendingplan will be applied to a deal reached with authorities, while1.9 billion will go to the miner's own projects. The remaining 2 billion will be spent on tailingsmanagement, monitoring, infrastructure renovation andmaintenance, studies and project development, added Klein. "We can clearly see a slowdown in the payment of repairs,"he said, describing the slower pace as normal given how muchtime has passed since the incident. Disbursements last year totaled around 10.2 billion reais. Klein's remarks follow a ruling from Chief Justice RosaWeber ordering a lawsuit investigating those responsible for thedisaster to proceed. "There was an imminent risk of the statute of limitationsexpiring for all charges whose maximum penalty doesn't exceedtwo years," the court said in a statement. In early 2020, prosecutors in the state of Minas Geraischarged former Vale CEO Fabio Schvartsman and 15 other peoplewith homicide for the dam disaster. But later that year a court ruled the case shouldproceed through slower federal courts rather than statetribunals, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court. ($1 = 5.0959 reais) (Reporting by Marta Nogueira; Editing by Steven Grattan andAurora Ellis)
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