Ex-BP engineer charged with destroying Deepwater evidence
An ex-BP engineer has been charged with destroying evidence tied to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Fifty-year -old drilling engineer Kurt Mix has been charged with two criminal counts of obstruction of justice for trying to destroy hundreds of text messages on his iPhone that related to the incident.
The messages, some of which were recovered by investigators, showed BP knew that the leak was more than three times larger than its official estimates.
Mix is the first person to be charged in connection with the disaster that killed 11 men and sent nearly five million barrels of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each count.
