The Tokyo Court of Appeals canceled a colossal fine of 84 billion euros against four former managers of the Fukushima Nuclear Office operator on Friday, a spokesman for the Tokyo court
The four officials of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had been sentenced in 2022 to pay this amount as part of a legal action presented by the shareholders in TEPCO, after the nuclear disaster launched by a Tsunami in March 2011.
The plaintiffs argued that the disaster could have been avoided if the managers had taken into account the investigation and implemented preventive measures, such as the installation of an emergency energy source placed in height.
But the defendant said that the risks were unpredictable and that the studies mentioned were not reliable.
“We cannot consider that the defendant had the possibility of providing this earthquake,” the court said in his decision on Friday.
Contacted by AFP, Tepco said “not to comment” about this decision.
“Take your responsibilities!”
The images transmitted in particular in the Nippontv and NHK channels showed the plaintiffs who had a banner and requested an even higher fine, the equivalent of 147 billion euros.
“Take your responsibility in Fukushima’s nuclear accident!”
“If I had to summarize today’s trial in a prayer: it is a sentence that will lead to future serious nuclear accidents,” said Hiroyuki Kawai, one of the lawyers of the plaintiffs at a press conference on Friday.
The fine imposed on the leaders of TEPCO intended to cover the operator’s costs for the dismantling of the reactors, the compensation of the affected residents and the decontamination process.
Jiji Press Jiji Press said the Court of Appeal denied that Tsunami was a predictable event.
The amount of this fine is considered the best assigned in a civil prosecution in Japan.
An unpredictable tsunami “, according to the patio
In 2015, the British oil giant was ordered to pay $ 20.8 billion (18.8 billion euros) for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in what was described at that time as the highest fine ever imposed on a company in the history of the United States.
If the earthquake and especially the tsunami caused the death of 18,500 people on March 11, 2011, the nuclear disaster itself did not make any victim in the act.
However, it is indirectly responsible for several thousand “linked deaths”, recognized by the Japanese authorities as deaths due to the degradation of the living conditions of the many evacuated people of the region.
In March, Japanese Justice had confirmed the acquittal of two former executives in TEPCO, accused of professional negligence during the March 2011 disaster.
This decision ended the criminal trial derived from the most serious nuclear accident in the world of Chernobyl (Ukraine) in April 1986.
Source: BFM TV
