Reports of US Government's First Criminal Charges In BP Oil Spill

Corporate Risk Systems have received reports that the first criminal charges in connection with the BP oil spill have been filed against a former BP engineer charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly deleting text messages after the spill. The texts were related to the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf.
It was been reported that there has been an expectation that criminal charges would be brought against individuals, but this is the first person charged since the spill happened two years ago.
These are preliminary charges and a law enforcement official says there are more charges to come.

Essentially the Justice Department claims that Mr Mix who at the time was "a drilling and completions project engineer for BP," deleted hundreds of text messages even after he was notified that he was legally obligated to preserve them.
In one instance on Oct. 4, 2010, Justice claims that Mix allegedly deleted about 200 messages exchanged with a BP supervisor. In it, Mix admits that a maneuver called Top Kill, in which BP injected heavy fluids into the well to try to stop the flow of oil, was failing.
"Too much flowrate – over 15,000," one of the text messages read, according to Justice, which also said some of those messages were recovered forensically.
At time, Justice adds, BP's public estimate was 5,000 barrels of oil per day, "three times lower than the minimum flow rate indicated in Mix's text."
The Justice Department says if Mix is convicted of the charges he faces a maximum penalty of 20 yeas in jail and a $250,000 fine for each of the two counts of obstruction of justice.