BREAKING NEWS

Hungarian police arrest director of aluminum company

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

OCTOBER 12, 2010 10:15

DEVECSER, Hungary — Hungarian police late Monday detained the director of the aluminum company responsible for a flood of caustic red sludge that killed eight people when it burst from its reservoir last week, according to the prime minister.

Police said Monday they were questioning managing director Zoltan Bakonyi on suspicion of public endangerment causing multiple deaths and environmental damage.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban told parliament that the government wanted to take over MAL Rt., the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, because the safe restart of production at the alumina plant was needed to save the jobs of thousands of workers.

Orban said his administration was also freezing the company's assets to ensure that funds were available to compensate for the damages caused by the disaster.

"Since this is not a natural catastrophe but the damage was brought about by people, the damages must be paid first and foremost not by taxpayers but by those who caused the damage," Orban told lawmakers.

Late last week, Bakonyi said that MAL Rt. had not noticed anything irregular at the site.

"The reservoir — which our men patrol daily — did not show any physical signs that something of this nature could happen," Bakonyi said.

Orban, however, said the government had other suspicions.

"We have well-founded reasons to believe that there were people who knew about the dangerous weakening of the reservoir wall, but for personal reasons they thought it wasn't worth repairing and hoped there'd be no trouble," Orban said.

On Sunday, MAL Rt. said it was willing to pay compensation "in proportion to its responsibility" for the damage caused by the deluge.

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