The U.S. Department of Justice has imposed a $4 billion fine on BP Oil to settle its criminal liability over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that killed 11 people and dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three months.
The DOJ fine will be paid over a period of five years; BP will also pay $525 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission over three years, reports the BBC.
In addition to the criminal penalties imposed by the Obama administration, BP also has raised an estimated $42 billion to cover liabilities from the incident.
The British company reportedly put up about 75 percent of the $20 billion Gulf of Mexico compensation fund; only $5.1 billion of which came from three smaller firms that accepted responsibility for the accident. A group of lawyers called the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee also won a $7.8 billion settlement from BP for the victims of the spill.
