Criminal deforestation: Beef giant JBS and its financial backers face coordinated transnational legal actions alleging money laundering
- Fourteen legal actions across four European jurisdictions launched today against the world’s largest meat company, JBS, its key banks, asset holders, accountants and lawyers over criminal deforestation of the Amazon in beef supply chains.
- Criminal complaint lodged against JBS’s parent company in the Netherlands, and JBS Global (UK) Limited referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA) in the UK.
- Barclays, BlackRock, ING Bank, KPMG, and EY among those referred to financial regulators for alleged breaches of anti-money laundering (AML) laws.
Fourteen coordinated legal complaints relating to alleged anti-money laundering offences were filed today across four European jurisdictions by members of the newly formed Transnational Legal Coalition (TLC), against the world’s largest meat company, JBS, and 12 of its key financiers, asset holders, lawyers and accountants.
A criminal complaint was lodged with the Dutch Public Prosecution Service against parent company JBS N.V. for alleged money laundering linked to widespread criminal deforestation in JBS’ beef supply chains in the Brazilian Amazon – including on Indigenous territories. JBS Global (UK) Limited in the UK was also referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the financial regulator.
Twelve additional legal complaints were filed with financial regulators supervising anti-money laundering (AML) laws in the UK, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands. The complaints target JBS’s key banks: Barclays, Standard Chartered, Bank of Montreal (London branch), Banco do Brasil (London branch), Rabobank and ING Bank (Netherlands), investment firm BlackRock Asset Management (Ireland and Germany), and JBS’s lawyers, accountants and auditors in the Netherlands: Loyens & Loeff, EY and KPMG.
Bláithín Quigley, Coordinator for the Transnational Legal Coalition (TLC) said:
“Illegal deforestation of the Amazon is a crime, not a business model. Indigenous communities and various civil society groups have been fighting corporate profiteering from this destruction for decades. The TLC was formed to coordinate legal efforts to tackle involvement in serious environmental crime, across global value chains. This is the first of a series of coordinated TLC actions targeting criminal deforestation in JBS’s supply chain.”
Innovative legal argument
Cattle ranching is the biggest driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, and there is an extensive body of evidence linking JBS to decades of that destruction. Most of this deforestation is not only illegal, but as it overlaps with huge swathes of special legally protected areas, is criminal under Brazilian environmental law.
JBS generates enormous profits through the purchase of cattle raised on land likely to be criminally deforested. The cattle move from farms in JBS’s direct and indirect supply chains to its slaughterhouses for processing before entering its complex global meat supply chains.
Under EU law-derived anti-money laundering legislation, cattle raised on criminally deforested land are criminal property. The complaints allege that JBS’s proceeds from the sale of such cattle flow across the world in plain sight and are being used to pay EU-based financiers and enablers, despite anti-money laundering legal frameworks applying in all four European jurisdictions where the complaints have been lodged.
AML rules require financial institutions, lawyers and accountants to conduct ‘enhanced due diligence’ on customers and transactions that carry a high risk of money laundering. Failure to report suspected money laundering to the relevant authorities is an offence, not just by the company, but also by employees who suspect money laundering.
New analysis links JBS to 6.5m hectares of Amazon deforestation
The TLC, whose members include Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Mighty Earth, FIND and King’s College London, commissioned a first-of-its-kind report from AidEnvironment on deforestation and farms linked to JBS. It revealed that between 1988 and 2026, JBS can be linked to over 6.5 million hectares of deforested land in the Brazilian Amazon (3,393,271 hectares from direct suppliers and 3,204,576 hectares from indirect suppliers). Of the sample of direct and indirect suppliers analysed by AidEnvironment, over 80% were found to have deforestation on specially protected areas called 'Legal Reserves' or 'Areas of Permanent Preservation' (APPs).
Transnational accountability for a transnational crime
Protected Indigenous territories, biodiversity and ecosystems, and tropical rainforest that absorb and store millions of tons carbon, helping to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, are being destroyed by a globally connected environmental crime. The TLC’s coordinated actions hope to secure accountability for these serious harms.
