Holder says they aren't done with their criminal investigations but I don't hold out a lot of hope that any more higher ups will be charged with anything that risks jail time.
On the plus side I would expect that the families of the workers who died on the rig and the workers who were injured can find some small comfort in the fact that at least some charges have been brought to held BP accountable.
November 15, 2012 8:14 PM Updated November 18, 2012 at 8:13 p.m. ET
NEW ORLEANS Two men who worked for BP during the 2010 Gulf oil spill disaster have been charged with manslaughter and a third with lying to federal investigators, according to indictments made public Thursday, hours after BP announced it was paying $4.5 billion in a settlement with the U.S. government over the disaster.
A federal indictment unsealed in New Orleans claims BP well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine acted negligently in their supervision of key safety tests performed on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig before the explosion killed 11 workers in April 2010. The indictment says Kaluza and Vidrine failed to phone engineers onshore to alert them of problems in the drilling operation.
Another indictment charges David Rainey, who was BP's vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, on charges of obstruction of Congress and false statements. The indictment claims the former executive lied to federal investigators when they asked him how he calculated a flow rate estimate for BP's blown-out well in the days after the April 2010 disaster.
Rainey's lawyer said his client did "absolutely nothing wrong." And attorneys for the two rig workers accused the Justice Department of making scapegoats out of them.
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"Today's resolution does not - does not - mark the end of our efforts," Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters at an afternoon news conference. "In fact, our criminal investigation remains ongoing, and we'll continue to follow all credible leads and pursue any charges that are warranted."
Earlier in the day, BP PLC said it would plead guilty to criminal charges related to the 11 workers' deaths and lying to Congress.
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Al Sunseri, owner of P&J Oyster Company in New Orleans' French Quarter, told CBS Radio News he was pleased about the settlement even though his oyster business is still not the same more than two years later.
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BP will plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect of a ship's officers, one felony count of obstruction of Congress and one misdemeanor count each under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Clean Water Act. The workers' deaths were prosecuted under a provision of the Seaman's Manslaughter Act. The obstruction charge is for lying to Congress about how much oil was spilling.
The penalty will be paid over five years. BP made a profit of $5.5 billion in the most recent quarter. The largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the U.S. Justice Department was a $1.2 billion fine imposed on drug maker Pfizer in 2009.
Greenpeace blasted the settlement as a slap on the wrist.
"This fine amounts to a rounding error for a corporation the size of BP," the environmental group said.
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Nelda Winslette's grandson Adam Weise of Yorktown, Texas, was killed in the blast. She said somebody needs to be held accountable.
"It just bothers me so bad when I see the commercials on TV and they brag about how the Gulf is back, but they never say anything about the 11 lives that were lost. They want us to forget about it, but they don't know what they've done to the families that lost someone," she said.
Sherri Revette, who lost her husband of 26 years, Dewey Revette, 48, of State Line, Miss., said the indictments against the employees brought mixed emotions.
"I'm saddened, but I'm also happy at the same time that they will be prosecuted. I feel for them, of course. You never know what impact your actions will have on others," she said. She added: "If they had made a phone call, who knows what the outcome would have been?"
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