“God allow them to find their lost children,” says one of the websites of foreign missionary groups that work to convert the original groups of Brazil. For them, the “lost children” are the Indigenous people, including the isolated ones. It only takes a few clicks to see that the path to “rescue” them is already outlined, and in detail. A complete mapping of these populations can be found on the websites of these organizations, with various analyses of the “degree of conversion” of each ethnic group, the number of missionary vacancies in the towns where “churches have to be planted” and even a list of those asking for cash donations to carry out these missions.

The work of these evangelists was not interrupted even by the coronavirus pandemic. And, on the last day, on the 21, the missionaries were strengthened in the biblical group of Congress. During the passage of a bill in the House (PL 1142) which provides an emergency plan for Indigenous peoples, deputies linked to the evangelical wing managed to include an article authorizing the permanence of religious missions already in territories occupied by isolated groups. To become law, the bill must be approved by the Senate and sanctioned by President Jair Bolsonaro.

If the COVID-19 crisis strengthened the gaze of religious groups towards Brasilia, in Indigenous lands and in its surroundings, it is no different. “We received information that the missionaries were organizing an expedition during the quarantine,” said Paulo Marubo, coordinator of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of Yavarí Valley (Univaja, for its acronym in Portuguese), to Repórter Brasil. This valley is the region with the highest concentration of isolated Indigenous groups in the country. 

“They believe that if they enter [Indigenous lands] in this period, the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI, for its acronym in Portuguese) and the Federal Police will not take measures to prevent such actions,” he adds, emphasizing that he considers the work of these missionaries as harassment.

In the Yaraví Valley (AM), the missionaries flew over the territory in a helicopter to contact Indigenous people between March and April. This occurred already in the midst of the pandemic. This was controversial, since at that time FUNAI reported that it had not received a request for authorization to enter towns in the region.

The helicopter was purchased by the New Tribes Mission of Brazil (MNTB, for its acronym in Portuguese), which in January had announced its acquisition for missionary activities. The purchase came after a campaign by Ethnos360 (formerly called the New Tribes Mission), a US missionary organization linked to the New Tribes of Brazil. In a 2018 video, in which it requested donations, the US entity said that the objective was to reach areas with poor accessibility in the extreme west of Brazil, near the border with Peru, the same region where the Yavarí Valley is located. They also asked for prayers for the plane to be used to establish churches “in the isolated villages of this remote region of Brazil.” After being questioned by the newspaper, New Tribes claimed that the helicopter “was purchased with amounts donated by an American businessman who prefers not to identify himself.”

Virtual piggy banks are also often used in order to directly fund evangelists on missions to convert Indigenous peoples. Frontier International, for example, had two American couples working as missionaries at Benjamin Constant (AM). On the organization’s website, there are missionary posts that tell about life in the region and its goals. “Our heart and our mission are to reach those who have not yet been reached among the Indigenous groups of the Yavarí Valley,” says an American couple, in an article that appears just above the link through which they receive donations. Another couple, also asking for donations, comments: “We are going to live on a boat, in the Amazon region, to preach in the villages along the river.”

Vacancies in Brazil

In addition to virtual donations, the websites of these foreign organizations are similar to job search sites. The vacancies are spread across Indigenous groups’ territories around the world, and Brazil appears to be full of “opportunities.” On the Joshua Project website, for example, there are 45 job openings for missionaries who want to plant churches and whose goal is to convert the Indigenous peoples of Brazil. There are even vacancies in the isolated towns of Alto Jutaí and Jandiatuba, both in the Yavarí Valley, and in dozens of other towns, especially in the northern region, such as in the Shanenawa area of Acre.

All the mapped towns are classified with a kind of colored thermometer called a “level of progress”, which marks the conversion rate of a specific group, in addition to other details. The green color shows the towns in Brazil where there is a significant missionary presence (more than 10%) and the red color refers to areas where there is almost no trace of Christianity.

There are also cards to facilitate prayer to reach the people and a link to a video encouraging the missionaries to participate, in which a “hidden tragedy of the Brazilian jungle” is mentioned, since “the opportunity for these tribes to hear the gospel and learn about eternal life is threatened by the increasing restrictions that missionaries suffer when trying to reach them.”

On the website of Finishing the Task, however, vacancies for missionaries who want to “complete the mission” are more restricted. In the most recent map, there are vacancies for two missionaries in Mato Grosso (one in Apiaká and one in Bororo), one in Acre (Katukina-Jutaí), one in Bahía (Tupinambá), one in Pernambuco (Tumbalala) and one in Alagoas (with the Koiupanka group).

By describing each of these ethnic groups, Finishing the Task provides detailed information on how much of the Bible has been translated into a specific Indigenous language, including whether they use the radio and whether there are churches on site. The organization brings together more than 1,500 religious missions “to reach groups that are not yet engaged” and, like the Joshua Project, collects information compiled by other religious associations.

The role of these organizations, mostly foreign, which are mapping the Indigenous groups who will be converted, is fundamental for the missions that operate in Brazil. These missionary groups and whose vice president of Indigenous Affairs is Edward Luz, director of New Tribes and father of the “anthropologist of the rural groups. “ On the AMTB website, the following is stated: “There are several valuable research initiatives that are actively involved in the work of researching who the least evangelized are and where they are.”

A Powerful Ally

These foreign organizations had gained a powerful ally in Brazil. In February, before social isolation, the government of Jair Bolsonaro appointed former missionary Ricardo Lopes Dias, who was already part of New Tribes, to head the FUNAI department responsible for isolated groups. The appointment was criticized by environmentalists, Indigenous organizations and members of civil society and notified to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF is the Portuguese acronym).

Initially, for the agency, the problem was that Lopes Dias would have access to detailed information on the isolated groups, which could be fed into the already extensive databases of foreign evangelizing organizations.

Later, when COVID-19 arrived in Brazil and FUNAI asked Indigenous people to not leave the villages to avoid contagion, the red traffic light was lit for MPF. He went to court to request the suspension of Dias’s appointment. The MPF argued that Dias’s “omissive conduct” and FUNAI’s “lethargy” in the development of emergency policies for Indigenous peoples in Brazil generated a “concrete threat of genocide with the COVID-19 pandemic, given their low resistance to agents that cause respiratory diseases.”

On the Joshua Project website, for example, there are 45 job openings for missionaries who want to plant churches whose goal is to convert the Indigenous groups of Brazil

The Federal Regional Court (TRF, for the acronym in Portuguese) of the first region accepted the request of the MPF and suspended the appointment of Lopes Dias, on May 21, which was a decision that made the Indigenous leaders feel relieved. However, this Tuesday (9/6), the Superior Court of Justice reversed the TRF’s decision that asked that Dias no longer be appointed to this position.

Other court decisions have also meant defeats for evangelists. In an attempt to avoid contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, also due to COVID, the Court of the Amazonas state forbade the entry of missionaries to the Yavarí Valley.  In a decision favorable to the lawsuit filed by Unijava, Judge Fabiano Verli, of Tabatinga (AM), mentioned the American pastors Andrew Tonkin and Josiah Mcintyre, the Brazilian Wilson Kannenberg and New Tribes. They rejected all initiatives in this regard and claim to be victims of persecution.

Tonkin, in addition to the accusations of preparing new incursions to contact isolated Korubo ethnic groups in Igarapé Lambança, has already been the subject of two investigations for invasion of other Indigenous lands in the Yavarí Valley, in 2014 and in 2019. The first one was dismissed, but the second one has yet to be completed.

In an email message sent to Repórter Brasil, Tonkin said that he has visited the Amazon region frequently for 13 years, but said that he has been in Iraq since March and therefore could not have participated in the alleged trip to Yavarí Valley. The American declared that he acts as an independent missionary and denied being part of the evangelical Baptist organization Frontier International, despite appearing on several pages of the organization’s website and Facebook page.

When asked about a possible attempt to evangelize isolated groups, he replied: “I only have plans to contact those that the Lord Jesus puts in my way.” 

And, ironically, he added: “I did not buy land from FUNAI, I do not plan to build a Coca-Cola factory on any reservation. I’m also not a headhunter of any kind. These are all rumors.”

Repórter Brasil also contacted Josiah Mcintyre, another missionary cited by the decision of the Court of the Amazonas State. But the American declined to comment on the organization’s legacies, saying he has been the target of lies. “God is with me. I leave everything in His hands and He will defend me,” he affirmed.

The third religious individual named, Wilson Kannenberg, works at Asas de Socorro, a Christian missionary organization that provides logistical support, including airplanes, to remote areas. According to the association’s website, they have the “purpose of serving God along with populations with difficult accessibility in the Amazon Region” and they understand that acting in technical manners, such as flying an airplane, is an effective way to reach isolated villages. When looking for him when writing the report, via email and cell phone, Kannenberg did not respond to questions submitted.

Regarding the New Tribes Mission, also cited by the Court of the Amazonas State, it sent the responses by email (read the full text) on behalf of Pastor Edward Luz, denying that they have plans to “contact ethnic groups considered by FUNAI as isolated.”

In Repórter Brasil, FUNAI said that it was not consulted about the entry of missionaries to Indigenous lands in the Yavarí Valley. “Entering the Indigenous territory without authorization is an invasion of the territory of the Union and has legal consequences,” added the foundation. The organization also said that it suspended the granting of new authorizations to enter Indigenous territories and that it has acted in the prevention of COVID-19 with the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (SESAI, according to the Portuguese acronym) of the Ministry of Health. The entity did not respond to other questions about the role of religious organizations with respect to Indigenous people.

COVID-19, which is rapidly spreading in regions where Brazilian isolated groups live, seems to have emphasized the importance of isolated Indigenous peoples remaining isolated, a policy adopted by FUNAI since the 1980s and which was threatened by the appointment of Lopes Dias.

The coronavirus was the main argument of federal judge Fabiano Verli when he prohibited the entry of missionaries into the Yavarí Valley. “Religious doctrine, although subjectively important to many people, is not, by possible and imaginable constitutional ideology, an essential service,” he wrote in his ruling. “I highlight what I think are good reasons for those who want to spread the beautiful word of Christ to the Indigenous people. But Brazil is a secular state and we have other priorities. Even semi-theocratic and tyrannical states like Saudi Arabia have emptied their temples when faced with COVID.”

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Repórter Brasil’s publication “From Brazilian Farms to European Tables – Socio-Environmental Impacts and Labor Violations in Brazil-EU Agricultural Supply Chains (Beef, Orange, Coffee and Cocoa)” is a contribution to the international campaign Our Food, Our Future, to begin in September 2021.

The action seeks to mobilize young people across Europe for a socially just and sustainable food system based on human rights, agroecology and food sovereignty. It is led by an international coalition of civil society organizations, which includes Repórter Brasil and is coordinated by Germany’s Christliche Initiative Romero (CIR).

The campaign for ethical eating for the next generation will demand responsibility from food corporations and supermarket chains over human and labor rights violations, environmental destruction, as well as land grabbing and forced displacement in their supply chains.

It seeks to sensitize European youth to put pressure on their politicians to pass laws compelling these companies to improve their trade practices and monitor all stages of their supply chains. In other words, to take measures that guarantee workers’ rights, especially for migrants and women, and help reduce climate change, hunger and poverty.

Social, environmental and labor impacts

The report gathers data on social, environmental and labor impacts caused by the supply chains of four products: beef, orange, coffee and cocoa. The study reveals that producers and companies in these sectors are linked to serious problems in Brazil, such as deforestation of native forests and exploitation of slave labor, in addition to contributing to chronic impoverishment and conflicts in rural areas.

Highlighting the most relevant data for the European context, this report compiles and updates research on supply chains carried out systematically over the years by Repórter Brasil and outlines an overview of these problems. Since 2001, the organization has mapped and investigated social, labor and environmental issues, exposing trade relations and demanding improvement in production processes.

At least three of the four agricultural export products addressed in this report appear prominently on the list of Brazilian exports to European Union countries in 2020 (US$ 28.3 billion): unroasted coffee (8.9%); fruit or vegetable juices (3.5%); and beef, which is part of the group “Other products – processing industry” (2.7%). In 2020, the EU accounted for 16.87% (US$ 28.3 billion) of Brazil’s export basket – second only to China.

Beef

According to the report, 65% of deforested areas in the Amazon are covered by pastures. From 1978 to 2018, cattle multiplied by ten in the region – from 8.4 to 87 million head. From 1975 to 2017, Brazil’s meat production as a whole increased by 642%.

A study focused only on livestock revealed that about 17% of all beef exported by Brazil (Amazon and Cerrado) to the EU in 2017 was directly “contaminated” by potentially illegal deforestation in both biomes. Considering the possibility of indirect “contamination,” the percentage of meat with issues may rise to 48%.

Recent studies also shows that the Brazilian livestock industry alone accounted for one fifth of the total carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions resulting from deforestation that occurred in all tropical areas of the world.

In addition to the environmental impacts, 51% of slave labor cases found in Brazil from early 1995 to October 2020 took place in the livestock sector. In these 1,950 cases, 17,253 people were freed in livestock – or 31% of all workers rescued.

Orange

According to the leaders of Brazil’s orange juice exporting industry, represented by CitrusBR – which is based on the three major companies in the sector, Cutrale, Citrosuco and Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) – three out of every five glasses of orange juice drank in the world came from Brazilian groves. Indeed, orange juice is the most widely consumed fruit-based drink in the world (about 35% of all juices) and Europe is by far the largest market (about two thirds) for this export-directed production.

The publication also shows that the orange supply chain uses migrant labor often coming from remote areas and hired on a per-season basis to harvest fruit during workdays of intense physical effort, under precarious conditions, in exchange for low pay, sometimes even below the minimum wage.

Two examples found by Repórter Brasil – one in 2020 involving a Citrosuco supplier and another one in 2019, of a farm supplying Cutrale, the largest company in the sector – illustrate the painful and inhumane life in the groves, which includes exploitation of slave labor.

Another very relevant piece of statistical data is that orange workers and small producers get less than 5% of the prices of those exports on supermarket shelves of rich consumer countries.

Coffee and cocoa

As for coffee, in addition to being the largest producer and exporter, Brazil holds about 27% of the product’s global market. From January to November 2020, EU member countries that are among the ten top consumers of Brazilian coffee (Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain) purchased 34.7% of the total – almost twice the US, which is the top single consumer (18.2%).

Similarly to orange, coffee plantations are pesticide-intensive. In addition, from early 2017 until the end of 2020, 466 people were freed from slave-like conditions in coffee areas.

As for the cocoa supply chain, the report explains that production decentralized as family properties is one of the factors complicating law enforcement in the sector. In subordination relationships disguised as “partnerships,” intermediaries or processing companies put pressure on families that even resort to their children to meet the demands.

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When Jair Bolsonaro took office as president of Brazil at the start of 2019, he ushered in a climate of hostility toward rural activists — Indigenous peoples, environmentalists, advocates for landless workers’ rights, and communities subsisting off the sustainable extraction of forest resources. In that first year, 31 people were killed in the wave of rural violence that swept Brazil. They have first names, surnames and histories of defending their land. What they do not have is justice.

In the more than one year since their deaths, no one has been convicted, and only one case is considered closed: that of an Indigenous person in the state of Amapá who, according to the Federal Prosecution Service, drowned — a version disputed by the family, citing injuries found on the victim’s body.

Another 19 investigations (61%) have still not been concluded, and one of the cases is still with the Prosecution Service. Police investigations into 10 cases (32%) have been completed and are awaiting trial, and six cases center on a single incident: the Baião massacre in the state of Pará. In only seven of the murders there has been pre-trial detention of suspects — mostly farmers and security guards — but in four cases, the suspects have been released.

The numbers are part of a Repórter Brasil survey based on a report by the Catholic Church-affiliated Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), compiled in a special multimedia report, “Measured Grave,” which provides an unprecedented view into the violence — and impunity — in rural Brazil.

“Impunity is a structural arrangement in which victims of violence maintain their historical condition of invisibility, even when they are eliminated,” says Paulo César Moreira, coordinator of the CPT, which has been releasing annual reports on rural conflicts for more than three decades.

This invisibility refers to the victims’ profiles. Those killed in 2019 were mostly men (93%) who lived in the states that make up the “Legal Amazon” region (87%), were linked to landless workers’ (35%) or Indigenous people’s movements, and who died defending their territories (25%). They were poor workers who often lived under threat and dreamed of a piece of land on which to make a living — a right guaranteed in Brazil’s Constitution. The victims include an employee of Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs.

The “Measured Grave” report also shows that most cases involved disputes over land (39%) or the defense of Indigenous territories (29%). But there were also labor issues and even a hate crime, in which an elderly person was run over during a protest by the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) in Valinhos, in São Paulo state.

The brutality of some of the murders indicates hatred and prejudice against rural peoples. In addition to the MST activist who was run over, environmentalist Rosane Silveira, from Nova Viçosa in Bahia state, was found dead with her feet and hands tied, stabbed and shot in the head, with signs of strangulation.

The suspects, people of interest to the police and those charged by the Prosecution Service include farmers, private security guards hired by landowners, hunters, as well as loggers and land grabbers. But there are cases in which investigators have turned up no clues, and situations where the police structure is poor — such as a murder in southern Amazonas state in which no police report was ever filed, and another one in the state of Mato Grosso, where the police station that was supposed to investigate a death did not even have a commanding officer.

Under Brazil’s Code of Criminal Procedures, a police investigation must be concluded in 30 days. But this rarely happens in homicide cases, whether rural or urban. “Research on homicides in Brazil and in the world shows that, when cases are solved, it usually happens within a year,” says Bruno Langeani, a lawyer and manager of the Sou da Paz Institute, which advocates for peace in society.

“Over the months, the chances [of solving a case] drop because time erases the traces, pressure on the authorities decreases, and witnesses forget details,” Langeani says.

In practice, that translates into 61% of cases under police investigation possibly never reaching the courts. And for those that do, the trial can drag on for more than 10 years.

Amid police institutions’ lack of structure and the slowness of the judiciary, impunity has long been a common problem. Of the 1,496 cases of rural violence between 1985 and 2018, only 120 (or 8%) went to trial, according to a CPT survey. Investigative outfit Repórter Brasil also investigated five murders that took place more than a decade ago to understand whether the time factor contributes to justice: only one of them went to trial, with the perpetrator eventually convicted and jailed.

In addition to silencing lives and struggles, violence also undermines investigations.

“With so many killings, getting witnesses is difficult,” says Nayara Santos Negrão, a prosecutor for agrarian crimes in Altamira, Pará state. “People don’t want to put themselves at risk and this ends up complicating the investigation.”

Edson Guerra, the agrarian crimes prosecutor in Pernambuco state, agrees, adding that some crimes leave no trace.

“Nobody wanted to speak because they were afraid,” he told Repórter Brasil about one of the killings documented in the “Measured Grave” report. “It was a planned, well-designed thing, because I had no evidence.”

Police officers in charge of investigations, however, often cite confidentiality or give vague answers to explain away the lack of progress in investigations. “There are still procedures under way that will help to complete the investigation,” one of them said for the “Measured Grave” report. “The investigation is under way,” another said.

The families, meanwhile, grieve for their dead, sometimes under threat, sometimes facing economic hardship.

“We live in anguish; we have no peace in this situation,” says Elizangela Raimunda da Silva Santos, the widow of Aluciano, a man who was murdered in rural Pernambuco. “It’s a terrible injustice. Is it really going to be just like that? I stayed behind with my children, struggling.”

She is now being helped by the church to feed her three young children.

‘License to kill’

“What makes these people commit crimes is that impunity is almost certain,” says Marina Silva, Brazil’s former environment minister.

Silva was born in a rubber plantation in Acre state and has experienced rural violence up close, having lost her union activist associate, Chico Mendes, in 1988, in one of the highest-profile murders of an activist in Brazil. Silva, who founded the Rede Sustentabilidade (Sustainable Network) party, says the discourse and some of the measures adopted by Jair Bolsonaro, such as reducing environmental inspections, has led to an increase in the violence.

“Killers feel they have a license to kill. They listen to the government’s discourse against Indigenous people, environmentalists, extractivist populations, and they feel they’re covered while the victims are helpless and unprotected,” she says.

Indeed, the number of rural conflicts increased by 23% from 2018 to 2019, according to the CPT — a record in the last five years.

To reduce the violence, Silva says, the murderers must be investigated and punished, along with those who ordered the crimes. When Silva was in office, from 2003 to 2008, she held public selection processes to hire more employees for IBAMA, the federal environmental protection agency, and strengthen environmental inspection; she even authorized inspectors to burn machinery used in illegal mines. The Bolsonaro administration has reversed this policy.

“In many cases, it’s all you can do. By forbidding [burning machines] as Bolsonaro does, the government empowers those who are breaking the law,” Silva says.

Most of the deaths from rural violence in 2019 occurred in the state of Pará, accounting for 12 of the 31 victims. The same state was the site of two earlier massacres — the killing of 19 landless farmers in 1996 by the military police in Eldorado dos Carajás, and the Pau D’Arco incident in 2017, when police killed 10 landless activists — and the murder of Catholic nun and activist Dorothy Stang in 2005. Unlike the victims named in the “Measured Grave” report, the execution of U.S.-born Stang gained international prominence and the perpetrators were arrested following a long legal battle.

But the municipality of Anapu, where Stang used to advocate for land reform, continues to see blood spilled. In 2019, three people were murdered because of land disputes there: Márcio Rodrigues dos Reis, Paulo Anacleto, and Marciano dos Santos Fosaluza. Their names are written on a red cross next to Stang’s grave, together with those of 16 others — all murdered as a result of their fight for land reform in the just the past five years in the town near the Transamazônica Highway.

Silva was the environment minister when Stang was killed; she was with the federal police in Pará the day she died.

“I sent them to the crime scene, because I thought that, if that murder [investigation] remained in the hands of [state authorities], some maneuver would be attempted to protect the murderers,” she says. “When the police arrived at the crime scene, the military [state] police wanted to incriminate an ally of Stang’s. It’s a lawless land.”

Silva also recalls how, when Stang’s body arrived in Anapu, some people set off fireworks to celebrate her death.

Stang, like many of the victims featured in the “Measured Grave” report, struggled for the democratization of access to land in the country.

“Inequality in land distribution in Brazil is among the world’s highest, being associated with historical processes of land grabbing, social conflicts and environmental impacts,” says a study by Imaflora (the Institute of Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification).

The study found that 10% of the largest farms occupy 73% of Brazil’s agricultural land. One of the measures to reduce inequality, the study said, is land reform. But that process was suspended in 2019 by the Bolsonaro administration, Repórter Brasil showed at the time.

João Pedro Stédile, an economist and coordinator of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), says there’s a pattern of the cruelty against rural workers, which has remained the same for decades.

“This violence is present in judicial persecution and police work, and it culminates in the murders,” he says.

It shows how the Brazilian state is elitist and biased, which guarantees repression of peasants and impunity for landowners, Stédile says.

“The Bolsonaro government, with its fascist rhetoric, induces even more impunity,” he adds.

The Secretariat of Land Affairs at the Ministry of Agriculture did not answer the questions submitted for this article. Secretary Nabhan Garcia declined to be interviewed.

Indigenous leaders targeted

After landless rural workers, Indigenous people were the main victims of rural brutality. In 2019, nine of them were murdered for defending indigenous territories, seven of whom were leaders of their respective communities. It was the highest number of murders of Indigenous leaders in the last 11 years, according to the CPT.

“The invaders felt totally authorized to be violent,” says Sônia Guajajara, executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib).

Guajajara says the current peak in violence against Indigenous peoples began when Bolsonaro declared he would not demarcate “even an inch” of Indigenous land, effectively refusing to recognize their customary land rights. The threat wasn’t mere rhetoric: in the two years of the administration, the government has not demarcated any new Indigenous territories, while pending requests for demarcation have largely stalled. Marcelo Xavier, the head of Funai, the Indigenous affairs agency, declined to be interviewed for this article; the agency did not answer questions submitted by reporters.

Among the murders of Indigenous people in 2019, the case of Paulo Paulino Guajajara has had the strongest repercussions. Paulino was a member of the Guardians of the Forest, a group formed by Indigenous people to protect their territory from loggers and encroachers.

“Their work is very risky because there’s no protection. [The Guardians] are doing the state’s work in protecting public lands,” says Sônia, a fellow member of the Guajajara peope. She adds that despite the risk, the group’s work is important: “They are significantly reducing the number of loggers that enter the territory.”

A year after Paulino’s murder, which drew international condemnation, his family continues to face economic hardship and threats.

“The whole world heard about my son’s death and the criminals are angry with me,” says his father, José Maria Guajajara. “I get threats but I’m not afraid. I just miss him so much.”

The two loggers indicted in Paulino’s murder remain at large despite being ordered to pretrial detention. After Paulino’s death, four other Indigenous people were killed in the same region.

For these slain activists and the families and communities they leave behind, the battle against impunity takes as much of a toll as the fight to defend the land or gain access to it.

“The struggle to punish the perpetrators has not been very successful,” says the CPT’s Moreira.

This article was originally published in Portuguese in Repórter Brasil and is part of the special report “Measured Grave,” which provides an unprecedented exposé of rural violence and the impunity that prevails over the murders of 31 landless workers, Indigenous people and environmentalists in the first year of the Bolsonaro administration.

*Additional reporting by: Mariana Della Barba, Diego Junqueira, Daniela Penha, Gisele Lobato, Maria Fernanda Ribeiro, Joana Suarez and Pedro Sibahi

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A large property in the Brazilian Amazon that had been repeatedly notified for environmental violations due to illegal deforestation and fires in recent years used an official document to hide embargoes and infractions. Busted by state and federal agencies several times and even after spreading flames throughout an extensive burned area of more than 1,200 hectares, Formoso Farm, located in Marcelândia (MT), kept a apparently “clean record” to continue producing grains, raising cattle and selling their production. 

Through the fraudulent use of a Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) of another property nearby, the farm owner managed to obtain a provisional authorization for rural operation (APF) from the Mato Grosso State Environmental Department (Sema/MT) in early September last year (2020). Only after alerts and inquiries sent to the agency by Repórter Brasil, still in December 2020, the documentation was cancelled on the 22nd, just a week before the expiration date (December 31st) .

After internal analysis, Sema/MT confirmed that the self-declared CAR included in the application (# 38005/2020) for economic activities on 4,800 hectares of the property´s nearly 7,500 hectares had been “created solely to obtain the authorization” and “did not correspond to the Formoso Farm’s area.” Once the irregularity was found, in addition to the annulment of the aforementioned authorization, the State Environmental Department announced that responsibilities “are being investigated so that appropriate measures can be taken”.
There were, according to Sema/MT, “strong indications of improper obtaining of this APF” and “the report of this fact was being forwarded to the Specialized Environment Police (Dema)”.

Between 2016 and 2019, Sema/MT notified the Formoso Farm complex 17 times for environmental violations only (see table below with inspection operations and periods), totalling fines in excess of R$ 3.5 million. Alexandra Aparecida Perinoto, a resident of Sinop (MT), responds individually for most of these violations, in addition to appearing as a beneficiary of the authorizations and the property’s main owner in both land property and environmental documents. Some of the notifications also mention her children. The 2016 inspections resulted in interdictions that are still valid, but, as pointed out by the state environmental department, they refer only to specific areas where irregularities have been found, and their effects “do not extend to other parts of the property” – as provided for in the legislation.

In order to obtain APFs that could “wash” the production of Formoso Farm, granting outward regularity to it, 27 applications were submitted, 20 of them after August 2019. Some months earlier (March to May), two environmental inspections – one from Sema/MT and the other from Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) – detected a series of violations (including declaring embargoed areas inside the property). Of all requests – and even after episode of the fraud and cancellation -, one of them, related to a parcel (Lote 08) smaller than 5% (344.5 hectares) of the entire farm remains valid until the end of 2021. Granted initially in October 2019, the document authorizes the economic use of 178.5 hectares, which is about half of the Lote 8 perimeter and just 3,7% of those wide (lawless and abrogated) liberation of 4,800 hectares.

This flood of applications for APFs took place following operations of CAR register fragmentation – an illegal manoeuvre that violates normative instruction 2/2014 (Art.32) and has been criticized by experts for almost a decade. Environmental organizations and state agents who works with sustainability issues have been denouncing the use of the CAR as an instrument for various forms of deviations

“The CAR was one of the most important elements of the Forest Code of 2012. There are positive aspects associated with it, but the way it was implemented and the gaps that were left over time have been accumulating, generating more loopholes so that it is possible to escape the legislation and cheat some rules”, comments environmental engineer Heron Martins, data analyst at the non-governmental organization (NGO) Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA). “One of the problematic things is the possibility of editing the CAR. The system allows ‘adjustments’ to be made until it is accepted” adds Martins, noting that the process of CAR validation by state agencies moves pretty slowly and remains as an “Achilles heel” of the system.

In the case of Formoso Farm, there was a first fragmentation in three equal parts (less than 2,500 hectares each), with a second level of fragmentation in 21 pieces (more details below). All of these 21 “lotes” were registered as separate enterprises (4 in the name of each of the 3 son/daughters and 9 in the name of Alexandra herself). As for CAR records and APF requests, numerous arrangements have been made (see also ICV´s table below) to ensure at least one valid documentation to trade commodities.

According to Sema/MT, the APF of Formoso Farm “Lote 08” meets the requirements and has been recognized as part of the “base for consolidated use.” That means it was deforested before July 22, 2008 (as provided for in Brazil’s 2012 Forest Code), following the rule established by State Executive Order 262/2019.About the process that extended the authorization (#22096/2019, attached with an environmental commitment term) to the end of 2021, Sema stated that automatic extension for one more year was granted to all APF due to the publication of Decree #770 of December 29th 2020.

“Tricks” series

Many schemes have been used by private actors that result in deforestation and fires in native forest areas in the Amazon, in order to continue their economic activities even after repeated environmental violations and sanctions. Taking some emblematic cases based on monitoring of Amazon destruction throughout since June 2020, Repórter Brasil publishes the story of the Formoso/Agromaster Farm as the starting point for a wider overview of the “tricks” used to circumvent the various norms and regulations that at least seek to contain the impulse driving destruction cycles.

Resulting from shared and collaborative work with various partners, these investigative efforts reveal that even private properties supposedly “regulated and monitored” remain in full swing in their violations, expanding large-scale deforestation and fires. That is not just the case of so-called undesignated areas, whose ownership and direct responsibility rest with the State and which have been monitored, notified and interdicted multiple times at both state and federal levels. More than that: due to the weakness of social governance and its tools for curbing and sanctioning violations, production in those properties is not even restricted in any way, and they keep their channels to the market open.

The Formoso/Agromaster case illustrates, in an instructive way, manoeuvrers and subterfuges used by agribusiness agents that resort to several means within the system itself to continue their march, year after year, one harvest season after another. As will be seen in the next parts of this series, they do not seem too concerned with changing their behaviour, which invariably leads to socio-environmental damage.

The property as a whole also accumulates violation notifications issued by the Ibama. The first record of illegal deforestation dates back to 2013, when a violation notification was issued to the aforementioned owner for a total fine of R$ 3.44 million. In 2019, inspectors returned to the area and once again found serious and extensive irregularities, which led to another huge fine of more than R$ 8.6 million and the property’s inclusion on Ibama’s interdiction list. Finally, in August 2020, Ibama returned to the area to apply administrative sanctions for noncompliance with the 2019 interdiction and for the fire mentioned above.

Ibama’s press office also confirmed that, in one of the inspections on the Formoso Farm, agents were given a sales contract registered to someone else, which later proved to be fraudulent. According to the agency, the Federal Police (PF) was informed and began the procedure of “transferring the fine to the farm’s real owners.” Repórter Brasil tried to contact the property’s owner Alexandra Aparecida Perinoto by phone but she did not reply.

These illegalities have also developed into in lawsuits filed by both the Mato Grosso State Prosecution Service (MPMT) and the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF). The former framed the cases of those three farms as part of the Satellite Alerts Project, a partnership with Brazil’s space agency Inpe that has looked into major deforestation cases between 2008 and 2019. The Federal Prosecution Service, in turn, filed a public civil lawsuit for R$ 3.5 million in 2017, based on deforestation detected by PRODES/Inpe in 2016 and confirmed by an expert report under the Amazon Protege program. The lawsuit is still pending.

Fires and deforestation

In late July and early August, a big fire spread all over the Formoso Farm complex. According to data from NASA’s Amazon Control Panel and images from other monitoring systems (such as InfoAmazonia) the fire spread over 1,600 hectares, including areas outside the property’s boundaries. That is the equivalent of 1,600 official football fields, more than all the vegetation destroyed in the 2015 dam collapse disaster in Mariana. According to Ibama’s calculations, 1,200 hectares would have been illegally impacted only within the property (since July 1, the state of Mato Grosso had established the fire moratorium, reinforced by a similar Presidential Executive Order that came into force on July 16).

The farms were originally separated as three large adjacent rectangular farms – Formoso/Agromaster, Formoso II and Mariana, according to their records on the Land Management System (SIGEF) of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra) (see images below). They were located next to the Bonjaguá Settlement Project. The very names show that the data provided by the registrants were not clear: on an application for a forest exploitation authorization submitted to Sema/MT in 2008 on behalf of another owner, the Formoso Farm area was spelt as Formosa Farm.

In a more recent document – from 2014, already listing Alexandra Aparecida Perinoto as its single owner – one of the farms appears only as Agromaster Fomento Agrícola III (on SIGEF, it is actually misspelt as “Agrícula”). This confusion of names and letters also involves a legal entity – Perinoto & Sotti Ltda – which had Alexandra Aparecida Perinoto as a partner and was shut down in 2017. Therefore, the discrepancy involving names and those responsible can be considered as a relevant part of the tricks used by private agents (almost always involving family members as well), since in the very lawsuit filed by the federal prosecutors, the web of individuals and companies ended up creating confusion, in addition to the repeated difficulty of notifying those involved.

Another common trick seems to combine property names (especially the “replacement” of Formoso with Agromaster) with deliberate land fragmentation strategies – using different instruments such as the Rural Environmental Register (CAR) itself. The strategies are intended to hide connections between agricultural products marketed and specific areas that not only have histories of environmental liabilities but have also been interdicted by both the state and federal governments. Since part of the sanctions was concentrated on portions of the huge area of ​​about 7,500 hectares, it is possible to assume that managers resorted to these “origin management” tricks, attributing the cattle to apparently “clean” areas so that production could be maintained and their products could be marketed.

Along this line, on the Mato Grosso Rural Environmental System (SIMCAR), owner Alexandra Aparecida Perinoto had clearly divided the Formoso II Farm into two separate areas (with 350 and 2,100 hectares) and the Mariana Farm into three others (the Mariana Farm itself, with 1,700 hectares; the Formoso Farm/Lot 08, with 344 hectares; and the Formoso Farm/Lot 14, with 358 hectares). According to documents from inspections, fines and interdictions issued by environmental authorities over the past few years, what was initially registered on SIGEF/Incra as three large farms appears as seven different properties on SIMCAR – each with its respective percentage of deforestation and sanctions (none of them with a valid CAR number).

With this trick, no interdictions appear to the main area of Formoso/Agromaster Fomento Agrícola III, even though 56.9% of its area has been deforested (above the limit of 20% established to guarantee the Legal Reserve in the Amazon biome). As a result of the same chicanery, the Mariana Farm itself has a very low percentage of degradation (35.6%), and separate lots appear intact, such as “Formoso Farm/Lot 14”, since it is smaller and “separate” from the others “lots” that form the whole of the Formoso Farm.

Precisely because of this expedient, the “Formoso Farm/Lot 8” – one of the multiple areas mentioned earlier – created by fragmenting the parallel outlines on the National Rural Registration System (SICAR) – could benefit from a temporary authorization, since it included areas deforested before 2008.

As for state agencies, in addition to the flaws that granted temporary authorizations for farming operations, two other aspects stand out. The first one is the time it takes for the system to process these violation notifications. Only six out of the 17 notifications related to these areas issued by Sema/MT had their decisions ratified to confirm the fines (no fine has been actually paid) and maintain interdictions. Only one of them, issued to one of Perinoto’s daughters, was considered as overdue debt because no appeal was filed. The Attorney General of the State of Mato Grosso (Procuradoria Geral do Estado, in Portuguese) informed Repórter Brasil, through its press office, that the filing of the tax execution was carried out in March 2021 at the 6th Civil Court of Sinop city.

According to PGE/MT, a declaration of overdue debt is related to its origin – in this case, the violation notification issued to Alexandra Aparecida Perinoto. If environmental agents find that the activity was underway or involved the notified party while they were issuing the notification, the overdue debt declaration will reflect that. In practice, however, in the case of the Formoso Farm, violation notifications are being issued both to Perinoto and her daughter, “except that the procedures were not concluded simultaneously,” that is, “if the procedure against Perinoto is concluded and the fine is not paid, her own name will also be listed as debtor.”

Inconsistency among the several systems – whether they are related to land property or environmental issues – is the second relevant aspect regarding the role played by state institutions, which are also somehow “willing” to be tricked. Inconsistency and miscoordination end up making life easier for violators who, aware of these legal loopholes, create some sort of deliberate mess involving names and boundaries to further hinder enforcement and regulation – which are not in the state’s interest only but also in the public’s. According to an assessment conducted by the technical staff at Centro e Vida Institute (ICV), who provided support in data analysis, “integration between agencies and distinct branches of government is highly flawed” and there are also multiple “bottlenecks in terms of technical capacity and work.”

Still according to the assessment, environmental, forest and land management systems at both state and federal levels have integration problems, so that a lot of data are simply not share or compared. Incra’s SIGEF was created not long ago, and the CAR still has to undergo its crucial validation stage. According to ICV’s technical assessment, all agencies are understaffed and have less equipment and lower technical capacity than would be needed to integrate these systems, databases and information. Without these structural conditions, it is not possible to create intelligence that really enables environmental enforcement and monitoring to “work at full potential.”

Supply chain

Having used these several tricks and even with such a large number of major environmental violations, agricultural activities continued and even expanded on the three farms. Based on an exclusive supply chain survey, Repórter Brasil found records of direct soybean supply from Agromaster III to two companies: Fiagril and Aliança Agrícola do Cerrado. Both sourced soybean from the Formoso/Agromaster III Farm in the first half of 2019.

Fiagril, a member the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (Abiove), and the Agricultural Alliance of the Cerrado, a member of the National Association of Cereal Exporters (Anec), are signatories to the Soy Moratorium, a 14-year-old intersector voluntary agreement to ban trading in commodities supplied by Amazon areas deforested after 2008 – the date set by the Brazilian Forest Code. Repórter Brasil contacted the two companies – Fiagril, currently linked to China’s Dakang, and Aliança, part of Luxembourg-based Russian conglomerate Sodrugestvo – but they did not respond to our requests.

While transactions happened in the same semester as Ibama’s environmental inspections (April 2019) that found serious illegal activities on those farms, the sequence of illegalities undermines any claim that the companies knew nothing of the heavy environmental liabilities behind Agromaster/Formoso’s production. First, because the farms had been interdicted by Sema/MT since 2016. Second, because there are records of soybean sales to the companies after the area was included on Ibama’s interdiction list in April 2019.

Therefore, the vast illegal fire in July and the fine applied by Ibama to those farms for noncompliance with the August 2020 interdiction are the “crowning” of a long process of irregularities. Such issues had not been detected by public and private regulations, and the farms found partners for Amazon devastation in Brazilian and foreign markets.

In addition to broader studies and surveys showing the links between soybean plantations  and Amazon deforestation – such as those conducted by ICV/Trase or UFMG professor Raoni Rajão – the case of the Agromaster III Farm (Formoso/Formoso II/Mariana) illustrates the fact that even huge areas and producers repeatedly caught and charged with environmental crimes, including those on environmental interdiction lists, can use several “tricks” to remain in the commodity export market with relative ease and calm.

Ibama’s own press office pointed out to Repórter Brasil that “interdicted agents often use third parties to evade sanctions and sell products from interdicted areas.”

Heron Martins, who took part in many studies on the subject (including the “Amazon illusion” of the Legal Reserve, whose percentage of 80% is effectively applied only to 22.75% of the 389 thousand properties located in the biome highlights the existence of a specific expression to characterize these “tricks” to cheat the supply chain tracking systems based on CAR registers: “leakage” (“vazamento”, in Portuguese). “What I noticed over time is that several editions of these CAR records seek, among other things, to exclude deforestation: both past and those that are yet to occur. When the environmental agency or the trading agent looks only at that CAR, there is no overlapping deforestation. This is a way of circumventing – and there are still many others”.

O post Fraud in authorization for rural activity in the Amazon erases “dirty record” of embargoes and environmental infractions apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Brazilian banks Itaú, BNDES, Banco do Brasil and Safra financed at least four of the meatpacking companies that contributed most to illegal deforestation in the Amazon. Between 2013 and 2019, the four banks’ funding operations with the meatpackers amounted to US$ 6.7 million. The data are provided by the Forests&Finance platform maintained by an international coalition of NGOs that includes Repórter Brasil. Its new update provides information on Brazilian financial institutions.

Together, meatpackers Ribeiro, Fortefrigo and Masterboi bought about 27,000 head of cattle from areas with evidence of irregularities, according to official audits conducted by the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF). The cattle trade operations took place in 2017.

The audit points out that the three meatpackers are among the ten companies that have most often deviated from the socio-environmental commitments they signed under the Conduct Adjustment Agreement for the Meat Industry (TAC da Carne) – with the Federal prosecution Service in Pará, starting in 2009.

Financial support

Frigorífico Ribeiro (R. E. Ribeiro Soares): from 2013 to 2014, under the Investment Support Program, Bradesco loaned US$ 139,000 for the company to purchase trucks and buses. Banco do Brasil, in turn, loaned US$ 1.5 million for items not listed on the database. According to data provided by the Federal Prosecution Service, 20% of the animals purchased – more than 6,000 head of cattle – came from farms with evidence of irregularities.

Fortefrigo: in 2019, the company received US$ 264,000 from Banco do Brasil under Finame, a credit line for machinery and equipment purchases. According to data provided by the Federal Prosecution Service, 11.5% of the animals purchased – more than 14,000 head of cattle – came from areas with evidence of irregularities.

Masterboi: From 2013 to 2016, the meatpacker received US$ 4.2 million from Itaú Unibanco to buy equipment, machinery, buses and trucks, in addition to items not listed on the platform. In 2013, it received US$ 524,000 from Banco do Brasil for unlisted items and US$ 82,000 from Banco Safra. According to data provided by the Federal Prosecution Service, 3.5% of the animals purchased – 5,500 head of cattle – came from properties with evidence of irregularities.

When contacted by Repórter Brasil, Itaú and Banco do Brasil preferred not to comment and only Bradesco replied, stating that it adopts comprehensive socioenvironmental criteria to analyse all its customers. See full note.

The Meat Industry Conduct Adjustment Agreement does not extend its socio-environmental commitments to the banks that fund the industry. “There is little regulation on the responsibility of financial institutions in the country,” says Federal Prosecutor Daniel Azeredo, who led the process of designing the commitments. “What we have are some legal efforts to make banks answer for their decisions about who and what they fund.”

Below, a Federal Prosecution Service chart showing percentages of cattle with illegal origin purchased by the meatpackers that had pledged to take responsibility for their suppliers.

In addition to being negatively listed on the MPF audit, the meatpacking companies mentioned in this report have been the focus of investigations conducted by Repórter Brasil. In 2020, for example, Masterboi supplied one of its processing plants with cattle from the Ângelo Farm in the state of Tocantins, which had been interdicted since 2008 by Ibama.

Production in the area had been interdicted by the federal inspection agency as a result of illegal deforestation to create pastures. The origin of the cattle, however, was not real. The animals were registered under the Rural Environmental Register (CAR) number of a “clean” property, free of interdictions.

Read more:

— O ‘boi pirata’ criado em terra indígena e a conexão com os frigoríficos Marfrig, Frigol e Mercúrio

— Relatório: Filé no supermercado, floresta no chão

All those mentioned here were contacted by Repórter Brasil. Frigorífico Ribeiro and Fortefrigo had not answered our questions on the date of publication. Masterboi stated in a note that it follows strict practices to monitor its suppliers in compliance with the Federal Prosecution Service and has no current “incidence of violations.” See full note.

The Conduct Adjustment Agreement for the Meat Industry (TAC)

Companies started signing the Meat Agreement 12 years ago in Pará, as a way to reduce the alarming rates of Amazon rainforest destruction. Studies show that livestock expansion accounts for 65% of all deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

Overseeing this link in the supply chain was strategic, says Rafael da Silva Rocha, a federal prosecutor who closely monitors the Agreement. “There are thousands of farms and deforestation hotspots, but the cattle invariably go through meatpacking companies, and then we managed to create some pressure,” he explains.

After more than a decade, the state of Pará accumulates almost half of the deforestation recorded in the Amazon between August 2019 and July 2020 (more than 5,000 kilometres – include precise figure here).

Social problems are added to environmental ones. The results of the latest Federal Prosecution Service audits published in 2019 show that meatpackers still buy cattle from properties caught employing slave labour, farms interdicted by inspection agencies, and cattle grazing on indigenous and quilombola territories, as well as conservation areas.

Read more: Amazônia: como criadores de gado driblam acordo com MPF e incentivam desmatamento

In addition to the 27,000 head of cattle found with irregular origin by the Federal Prosecution Service, Daniel Azeredo, a federal prosecutor and a member of the Legal Amazon working group, warns about farmers’ schemes concocted to circumvent the Agreement.

Cattle raised on farms interdicted or included in the “dirty list” of slave labour are often registered as belonging to other farms. Another method employed by farm owners that escapes inspections is the indirect supply chain. “Cattle are raised on irregular farms and then sent to ‘clean’ farms for fattening before being sold to meatpackers,” Azeredo explains.

Leia mais: Rota do gado

In July last year, a new clause was added to the Meat Industry Conduct Adjustment Agreement in order to curb cattle transfers used to evade inspections: meatpackers now can only purchase three animals per hectare. This new protocol is designed to avoid cattle purchases from farms that receive animals from irregular properties for resale.

Editor’s note: This article was updated on June 9 to correct references to the Frigol meat processing plant. The company contacted Repórter Brasil after the publication to inform that the reference to “Finame” in its annual financial report did not refer to the BNDES credit line, as initially considered by the Forests & Finance platform, but to another type of international financing, with a similar name. The platform managers reviewed the data and made the correction. Repórter Brasil removed mentions of Frigol from the text. The company had been contacted by Repórter Brasil during the investigation for this article, but did not respond at the time. Check the note sent by the company here.

O post Banks inject more than US$ 6 million in the meatpacking companies that most often violated their environmental commitments in the Brazilian state of Pará apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

The Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area (EPA), in southern Pará state, appears at the top of several lists of conservation units (CUs) with the highest rates of deforestation and fires not only in the Amazon, but in Brazil as a whole. That is a known fact. Over more than a decade, the region has been coveted, invaded and plundered by numerous “profitable” enterprises seeking to dominate the territory, which resulted in several conflicts and repeated reports of crimes rarely solved by inspection operations. They might include environmental violations per se or other crimes such as land grabbing or exploitation of slave-like labour.

As its name entails, this vast 1.68-million-hectare territory located in a strategic position in the so-called Xingu Socio-Environmental Diversity Corridor is supposed be an environmental protection area. This category was created by Law 6902/1981 and is part of the National System of Conservation Units (SNUC) (Law 9985/2000). It is aimed precisely at protecting biological diversity, regulating the occupation process and ensuring sustainable use of natural resources in areas with some degree of intervention and presence of outside actors. That is what it should be.

Instead, the EPA Triunfo do Xingu has been invaded, fragmented and eaten away by activities with wide-ranging impacts such as illegal mining, logging and livestock. With about 1.68 million hectares, it was created by a state executive order in 2006, and it covers parts of the huge municipalities of São Félix do Xingu (66% of the EPA’s total area) and Altamira (34%). It is part of the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program (ARPA), together with neighbouring areas such as Terra do Meio Ecological Station and Serra do Pardo National Park. Creation of Conservation Units and demarcation of Indigenous Lands (ILs) between 2004 and 2008 were also part of the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon (PPCDAm, in its Portuguese acronym). According to a study by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam) , it helped to reduce deforestation rates during that period by 37%.

However, the most recent data are frightful. Between 2018 and 2020, more than 2,000 trees were cut down per hour just in this Conservation Unit, according to a survey conducted on Sirad X’s three-year monitoring. Sirad X is a deforestation detection system managed by Rede Xingu+, a civil society network that brings together organizations, associations and institutions working in the Xingu River basin. Approximately 93,300 hectares were deforested in the same period in the Triunfo do Xingu EPA, which accounted for nearly one fifth (18%) of all deforestation in the basin.

According to the same survey, two-fifths (40%) of the territory previously covered by native forests have already been converted to other uses, in particular bovine cattle raising. In 2015, this figure was 27% – a 13% increase in just five years. The municipality of São Félix do Xingu is known for having the largest number of cattle in the country – an estimated 2.3 million, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) – while Altamira has over 700,000 cattle head. Fifteen years after its creation, the Triunfo do Xingu EPA has no consolidated management plan or zoning. Management Council meetings have become virtually annual (the last one with a registered minute took place in May 2019, and the second-to-last meeting was held a year earlier, in May 2018), according to the website of the Pará State Forest and Biodiversity Institute (Ideflor-Bio).

In September 2020, the Pará state government’s website released news about developments in its “Sustainable Territories” Program, based on a public notice for selection of producers to receive special government assistance, presented as a pillar of the Amazônia Agora strategy. It includes Ideflor-Bio and the State Environment and Sustainability Department (Semas), among other agencies active in the EPA. The municipal government of São Félix do Xingu also highlighted the initiative aimed to list and support “good practices.” The press offices of Ideflor-Bio and Semas were asked about their stances on both the progress and the intensity of destruction within the Conservation Unit in its various aspects and on ongoing government actions, but they did not respond.

According to Elis Araújo, a lawyer from the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), “there is major land grabbing in the Triunfo do Xingu EPA. Large companies and cattle ranchers are pushing for more land. There are conflicts over resources, including access to water, to rivers. And the area has never had a management plan. Conflicts have never been solved.” In June 2020, due to the alarming increase in deforestation reports by the various monitoring systems, social organizations that work in the area – ISA, Rede Xingu+, Greenpeace Brazil, International Institute of Education of Brazil (IEB), Institute of Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora) and the Amazon Institute for Man and Environment (Imazon) – submitted a complaint to the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF), the Pará State Prosecution Service (MP/PA), the National Council of the Prosecution Service (CNMP) and the state government demanding urgent measures to stop the escalation of destruction. They recommended that actions be taken “promptly” to “combat criminal organizations that fund and encourage people to invade protected areas, explore logging and open new mining sites,” mentioning “local politicians who demand that people transfer their electoral registrations so they can vote in the next municipal elections,” as described by the press, and asking for “improvement in the work of institutions directly involved in combating environmental crimes associated with deforestation.”

“Consortia of deception”

Based on our own findings and comprehensive data crossing – including satellite images and monitoring systems, land tenure documents available on the Rural Environmental Register (CAR), as well as records of public civil actions and lawsuits, or information about supply chains (commercial connections), we looked into the functioning of the “consortia of deception – groups of agents that are behind this “steamroller” of socio-environmental destruction that is still in full operation. By focusing on a degraded area full of environmental violations and interdictions on the north of the Triunfo do Xingu EPA (see map above, highlighted in blue), with strong influence on the increase of deforestation and fire in the fully protected area of Serra do Pardo National Park, it was possible to establish an overview for the second part of the series on the “tricks” that sustain socio-environmental devastation schemes in the Amazon (see the first part of the series here.

In the first three months of 2021, monitoring by Imazon (SAD) and MapBiomas Alerts confirmed the existence of multiple clear-cut deforestation zones within the Conservation Unit, including in the area highlighted above – a group of allegedly large contiguous properties with high concentration of interdictions for environmental violations determined by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama). This portion of the Triunfo do Xingu EPA was also full of – constantly fragmented – registrations on the Rural Environmental Register (CAR) and some land titles from the Land Management System (SIGEF) developed and maintained by the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra). Its location is strategic for establishing bases within the area and also for intensifying fronts to invade other, more preserved and more restricted conservation areas such as the already mentioned Terra do Meio Ecological Station and Serra do Pardo National Park.

By using the history of occurrences and several cross-searches and by focusing the analysis of deforestation dynamics on this specific portion of the EPA, it was possible to understand the underlying dynamics and processes of forest destruction that threatens the Xingu Corridor, formed by nine Conservation Units and 21 Indigenous Lands (ILs) that span 26 million hectares.

That remote area (about 240 km from the urban centre of São Félix do Xingu) is located between two side roads – Toca do Sapo and Jabá, within the EPA, both leading to the Pardo River and at the boundaries of Terra do Meio and Serra do Pardo. It is formed by a group of large properties, with many subdivisions and overlapping CAR registrations. Within this zone of widespread devastation, four properties have their land titles registered at Incra to Caio Jerônimo da Silva (Brumado, Brumado I, Colorado do Rio Pardo and Limoeiro farms). He is the son of Coriolano Rodrigues da Silva, and both are on Ibama’s interdiction list. Coriolano, in turn, appears as the owner of two other areas in the region also known as “Gleba Rio Pardo” according to the CAR: the Dois Irmãos Farm and the Esplanada Farm, registered to Agropastoril Três Lagoas, a company belonging to Coriolano Rodrigues da Silva, registered as an eyeglass store (inactive) in São Miguel do Araguaia, Goiás.

Only for one of the violations, Caio was fined R$ 48.1 million in November 2018, for destructing 4,800 hectares in the region (part of the area shown as lilac squares on the map above, with the area registered on the CAR shown as a squarer shape on the right, precisely at the Brumado Farm). In one of the Public Civil Actions filed by the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF) on Federal Courts against Coriolano after deforestation was found in a nearby area  – as part of its Amazon Protege program –, he claimed that he had already been fined by Sema, then he said that he had not been properly served and, finally, that the violations had not been confirmed and the area in question did not belong to him. To obtain proof of the last statement, Judge Maria Carolina Valente do Carmo had required an expert assessment, but the defendant himself chose not to deposit the fees to pay for it. The sentence, handed down in April, partially accepted the Prosecutors’ arguments, recognizing the defendant’s responsibility. While the Judge did not rule that he should pay the R$ 19.1 million compensation initially requested, she ended up ordering Coriolano to reforest the area using a professional and detailed project and pay R$ 598,000 as collective moral damages to the Diffuse Rights Fund.

“Holes”, deviations and connections

In order to avoid restrictions and constraints imposed by environmental interdictions, violations and fines, families’ members not changes places with and replace each other, but also resort to a series of other figureheads who lend their names so those family members do not appear ahead of the entire group of enterprises.

This procedure has been denounced for years by organizations such as Greenpeace, which recently highlighted another similar case involving about 5,300 hectares deforested between August 2019 and June 2020 on a farm further south in the same Triunfo do Xingu EPA. The total area of ​​the Tiborna Farm was “dismembered” into fragmented CAR registrations on behalf of“third parties”. Through another “clean” farm, the property guaranteed the “regularity” of its bovine livestock production. The case had already been mentioned in a report on squatters, loggers and episodes of violence at the18-year-old Terra do Meio (Pará: Conflict status).

In the case of the Rodrigues da Silva family, at least four other “owners” are listed on CAR documents (most of them with pending registration, but some were even “active,” that is, officially validated by the state agency). Kaio Fontes Moura appears to have the closest ties to the family, since he is also the apparent “owner” of an area (Bela Vista Confinamentos) closer to São Félix do Xingu, used by the family as a support point for their cattle business. In reality, analyses of the supply chain show that the cattle come from the aforementioned Colorado do Rio Pardo Farm, on the way between the region furthest to the north of the protection area and the urban centre, where slaughterhouses and the road for transportation are located.

Another property (São Matheus III Farm) is registered to Kaio in an area further south of the municipality, where some other nearby farms belonging to the group are concentrated (on the edges of the Menkragnoti Indigenous Land), which join two other main farms in terms of cattle trade. All beef cattle is traded through the São Matheus and São Matheus II farms, registered on the CAR to Caio Jerônimo. Animals from areas far from the Triunfo do Xingu EPA are transferred (sometimes in the opposite direction as well, for fattening purposes) to the intermediate area of the São Matheus Farms (I and II) and sold to meatpackers such as giant JBS unit in Tucumã, according to a supply chain flow analysis made with documents issued in 2018. In a statement, JBS informs that Fazenda São Matheus II was registered as a company supplier, but has been blocked since 2019; and that São Matheus I is not a supplier.

The cases of Coriolano and Caio has yet another partner – farmer Manoel Carmo da Silva. He appears as a partner of the family in public civil actions filed by the Federal Prosecution Service and has ties with companies registered on Brazil’s National Corporations’ Register (CNPJ): one on Coriolano’s name and another one on behalf of Agropastoril, which sometimes also appears as Agropecuária Três Lagoas.

Repórter Brasil found that Caio Jerônimo, a well-known producer in São Félix do Xingu, was murdered a few months ago in the region itself; the reporter tried to contact the other farmers and the respective lawyers, over the first 10 days of May, but failed. In case of any claim, this report will be updated.

An analysis of the supply chain also shows intense flow from Coriolano’s and Caio’s farms to another kinship-based conglomerate: that of the Bueno family. Even due to the proximity of one of the farms belonging to Valdiron Aparecido Bueno (Três Poderes Farm, later an intermediate “supplier” to another property, the Sossego Farm), they have connections similar to inter-family “consortia”. By phone, he claims to even be renting pasture areas at Três Poderes (“because it’s cheaper”) to “neighboring” third parties and denies that he has made these “circulations” of animals with the farmers described above. He only confirms that he had Caio Jerônimo as his client in the agricultural store that he keeps in the center of São Félix do Xingu. “You see the people talking about deforestation, but when we walk along the side of the roads – and I was there for about four months because my job has been mostly in the city – you don’t see anything. I border the property of Caio Jerônimo’s family, but I never went there to see how it is. I know that my share is in the woods ”.

In addition to being a producer, Valdiron is also a trader and organizer of livestock events in São Félix do Xingu. He was interviewed about the social context for livestock predominance in the town for the investigative report published in July 2019 by Repórter Brasil in partnership with English newspaper “The Guardian” and the “Bureau of Investigative Journalism” about the repeated purchase of cattle from an illegally deforested and interdicted area.

Buffer zone

Another farmer linked to the same region highlighted in the Northern part of the EPA is Wilson José Mendanha, pointed out in a lawsuit filed by the Pará State Prosecution Service (MP/PA) as responsible for the Chopp Dance Farm, which is part of the conglomerate of properties highlighted here (in circles on the maps above). Mendanha appealed the first-level court decision that had frozen R$ 22.7 million of his assets and ordered immediate interruption of any degrading activity on the site (under penalty of a daily fine of R$ 2,000) for deforesting 2,000 hectares found by an Ibama operation in June 2019. In the appeal, he tried to justify himself by saying that he had sold the property to another person in 2016 and that it was registered to a third party on the CAR, also since 2016. Due to insufficient documentary evidence, none of the justifications was accepted by Court of Appeals Judge Diracy Nunes Alves of the Pará Court of Justice in a decision published on April 13, 2021.

The sentence concerns a single property of 4,100 hectares which, in the Rural Environmental Register System (SICAR) in Pará, appears to be divided into three areas (Chopp Dance I, II and III). What the Judge saw in the case of the huge deforestation of more than 2,000 hectares attributed to Mendanha was “the so-called periculum in mora in reverse, that is, when the danger of delay lies at the other party of the legal/procedural relationship,” since “there is risk of damage to the community if the ecologically balanced environment is not restored (Art. 225 of the Constitution).” “The fine has an individual nature and should be applied to the offender. Since fumus boni iuris [plausibility] and periculum in mora in favour of the appellant has not been demonstrated, the fine cannot be annulled, as there is no evidence that the property belongs to a third party, just as the causal link was not interrupted,” she adds.

Mendanha’s son Emerson José is one of the people involved in another public civil action filed by the Federal Prosecution Service for illegal deforestation in the same area north of the Triunfo do Xingu EPA (highlighted on the maps above), confirmed by data from the PRODES system, from the National Institute of Space Research (Inpe), as part of program Amazon Protege. The same Public Civil Action involves not only Caio Jerônimo and Kaio Fontes but also a farmer responsible for deforesting more than 3,200 hectares (detected in 2017) at the Santa Rosa farm (total area ​​6,800 hectares) and also charged by Sema with a series of other environmental violations.

Repórter Brasil reached out to Wilson and Emerson Mendanha, by telephone. Emerson said he is unaware of the MPF’s lawsuit. Wilson said what he had already claimed to the court. He explained that he had sold the land years ago and that, when he owned the area, “he did not remove a single tree from the site”. The responsibility, therefore, would lie with the buyer, named Leonardo, and of whom he does not remember the surname. Wilson still claims that he continues to try, via court, to transfer the responsibility to who would be the current owner of the land.

Combating the continuity and accumulation of irregularities is at the heart of the group of NGOs’ alerts and recommendations to the authorities regarding the EPA. In addition to demanding continuous inspection operations and the establishment of two bases within the conservation unit by the Pará state government, they suggested a “buffer zone” in a 10 km strip around its boundaries with federal protected areas. “The very management plans for federal conservation units such as the Serra do Pardo National Park and the Terra do Meio Ecological Station expressly mention the Triunfo do Xingu EPA. Therefore, no buffer zone would be needed between the more restrictive federal areas and this state area,” says Elis Araújo from ISA. “But what we see is the need to restrict activities that can be developed in this closer area [between the state conservation units and federal units]. The EPA is not taken seriously and doesn’t have effective management, and so it ends up not being an actual conservation unit.”

At least according to some members of Ideflor-Bio in their dialogue with these organizations, stronger initiatives such as the establishment of a “buffer zone” do not find support in the state government, which prefers focused initiatives such as “Sustainable Territories.” Meanwhile, media reports and academic research in the area of livestock farming increasingly add information about the means used by producers to continue devastating. In an article published in 2020, researchers from Imazon and the US-based universities of Florida and Wisconsin-Madison pointed out five ways in which producers with farms marked by socio-environmental problems trade their cattle: a) selling it as “standing cattle”, directing animals to specific areas where they remain in quarantine; b) transferring it to neighbouring states with weaker monitoring or to meatpackers that do not enforce requirements; c) transporting it to “clean” properties belonging to others to use them as references of origin; d) leasing “regularized” land to do the “washing” by themselves, or e) trading it with intermediaries from farms that will resell the cattle later.

The need to extend monitoring systems – such as the Meat Conduct Adjustment Agreement (TAC) headed by the Federal Prosecution Service – at least to a first tier of “indirect suppliers” is one of the points highlighted by the study, which include broad desktop research and work with ranchers. But an aspect that still gets little attention in these surveys – and which emerged from the crossing of data and findings from this devastated region in the northern part of the Triunfo do Xingu EPA – is the participation not only of some technicians and specific networks helping these “consortia of deception,” but also of state agents.

These points of contact for large private farmers with public servants “infiltrated” in state agencies at various government levels (which will also be mentioned in the third part of this “tricks” series) have their roots in historical processes, according to experts interviewed by Repórter Brasil. They go back decades in this region that became known as Terra do Meio. Tarcísio Feitosa, an environmental activist with a wide range of activities in the Xingu region, points out that this logic of “consortia” underlying several types of crimes combined (in addition to land grabbing, logging, livestock and illegal mining, there are others such as money laundering) has existed for a long time, with strong political and economic connections. The countless denunciations and investigations involving, for example, public servants of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), including recent convictions, point in the same direction.

When the mosaic of Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands of the Xingu Corridor was established in mid-2000 as a result of social pressure after the murder of environmentalist catholic nun Dorothy Stang in 2005, many of those “consortia” that were dispersed in different expansion fronts for vegetal and mineral extraction and agriculture frontiers in the Amazon started concentrating on the Triunfo do Xingu EPA. “The Triunfo do Xingu EPA was the result of strong negotiation with the state government, following the idea that ‘people are investing lots of money and you can’t stop deforestation,’” adds Feitosa, who actively participated in these processes by coordinating mobilization of local communities and was awarded in 2006 with the Goldman Environment Award for South and Central America.

“They knew about this dynamic that was taking place in the region, including the intention to keep advancing with cattle. If you look at charts of livestock displacement and increase, this is very visible,” he adds. Also as a result of these “consortia”, inspection is minimal: from ​​combating slave labour to environmental issues. Criticising the relationship between CAR registrations and legalization of land grabbing, Feitosa, after many years and several projects across the region, makes a harsh and gloomy forecast.

“This region of the Triunfo do Xingu EPA will be consumed by fire. Perhaps only forests within legal reserves will be left, and they are extremely impoverished because they have already been exploited in years of logging, and maybe the EPA [Environmental Protection Area] – if there is an EPA and it is respected. But a lot of things will still burn in there this year [2021]. Watch and see:  a lot of things will burn.”

Alert from the editor: this article was updated, with addenda and adjustments, on 05/11/2021.

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To benefit ranchers, Rondônia state representatives passed a law that decimates two reserve areas around Porto Velho, the state’s capital. The environmental damage, if the bill is sanctioned by the governor, will be the removal of the environmental protection of 219 thousand hectares from the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve and the Guajará-Mirim State Park, an area slightly bigger than those of the cities of London and Madrid combined.

Almost half (11 out of 25) state legislators who unanimously approved the project are cattle ranchers or were financed by cattle ranchers, according to a data crossover carried out by Repórter Brasil agency, based on the declaration of assets and donors available at the Superior Electoral Court with documentation on livestock transport. The reduction of the areas of environmental protection will directly benefit this economic activity: it is estimated that there are 120 thousand head of cattle in Jaci-Paraná reserve.

Among the 25 state representatives, six received ranchers’ donations in the last electoral campaign: Alex Redano (DEM party), Cássia das Muletas (Pode), Geraldo da Rondônia (PSC), Johny da Paixão (PRB), Lebrão (MDB) and Luizinho da Fetagro (PT). In addition to receiving donations, the PT representative is also among the six who are cattle ranchers, alongside Adelino Follador (DEM), Edson Martins (MDB), Ezequiel Neiva (PTB), Luizinho Goebbel (PV) and Laerte Gomes (PSDB).

The relationship of the state legislators with interests in agribusiness is not limited to donations. The bill’s rapporteur, representative Jean Oliveira (MDB party), has no rural property in his name and has not received donations from ranchers, but he is investigated by the Federal Police for being part of a gang that tried to perform land grabbing in a conservation unit and for considering killing a prosecutor who opposed the theft of public land, according to Folha de São Paulo newspaper.

If agribusiness sector is benefited on the one hand, on the other, the project threatens indigenous people, including at least six groups living in voluntary isolation, according to nun Laura Vicuña, a missionary from the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi). “If this bill is sanctioned by the governor, Brazil can commit ethnocide,” she says.

Both the Guajará-Mirim State Park and the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve are in areas around the Uru-eu-wau-wau, Karipuna, Igarapé Lage, Igarapé Ribeirão and Karitiana Indigenous Lands. A region that Vicuña defines as an “ecological mosaic through which people in voluntary isolation roam”.

“They [indigenous] have no contact with society and are not restricted to demarcated indigenous lands, therefore, the importance of these reserve areas”, explains Vicuña. According to Cimi, there are four isolated groups identified close to the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous Land, one in the Karipuna and the other in the Karitiana Indigenous Land. “We only know the existence of these peoples from traces found by residents or from overflights”, says the missionary.

The favoring of ranchers to the detriment of environmental preservation and protection of indigenous people is at the origin of the text of the Complementary Bill 80 of 2020, which was sent by Governor Colonel Marcos Rocha to the state representatives. The governor, who is a close ally of Bolsonaro, and reproduces the president’s anti-environmental speech, argued in the text that in Jaci-Paraná reserve there are 120,000 head of cattle “without any environmental licensing or authorization to suppress native vegetation”.

Rocha also assumed the government’s inability to deal with the invasions: “The countless command and control actions carried out so far have been insufficient to prevent the advance of illegal occupation and deforestation.”

It is now up to the governor to sanction or veto the bill sent by himself. The legal deadline ends on Thursday (May 20). A day earlier, the State General Attorney’s Office (PGE) of Rondônia state issued an opinion that points out the project’s unconstitutionality. Among the problems listed by PGE are the absence of technical studies to support the decision and the violation of the principle that forbids environmental setbacks.

Legalization of land grabbing

“The purpose of this law is to legalize land grabbing,” says environmentalist Edjales Brito, a member of the Kanindé Ethno-Environmental Defense Association. For Brito, the government’s justification that it is no longer able to prevent the invasion of areas by livestock is absurd. “They didn’t even consider changing the type of protection in the areas and making it more compatible with the presence of some activities, because the plan is to end everything,” he says.

Brito thinks that Rondônia is a “Brazil’s lab”, in which environmental setbacks arrive first. “The mentality of those in power is colonizing. They call indigenous and extractives lazy and put themselves as the productive sector, with a speech of superiority”, says the environmentalist.

With the reduction of reserve areas, what will happen, according to Brito, is the repetition of a cycle of destruction. “First they remove the wood, then they burn, they make the pastures and, finally, they make room for export monocultures, such as corn and soybeans”, he explains.

The wildfires do not wait for the approval of the law to start the destruction. There were 895 fire outbreaks in the Jaci-Paraná reserve and 133 outbreaks in the Guajará Mirim Park in 2020. The two threatened areas are mostly inserted in the limits of Porto Velho and Nova Mamoré. Precisely the two most burned cities in Rondônia in 2020, as shown by the satellites of the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe).

Should the law be enacted, Jaci-Paraná reserve will lose 171 thousand hectares of the protected area, remaining with only 22 thousand hectares, just over 10% of its original area. The area was created in 1996 to settle 52 extractive families that were already in the region, explains the representative of the Organization of Rubber Tappers of Rondônia (OSR), Joadir Lima.

Over the years, with the lack of supervision and support from government agencies, the reserve was being invaded by ranchers. “The rubber tappers always denounced it, but the government never acted, and the families were expelled,” says Lima. Between 2008 and 2020, deforestation in the reserve was 83 thousand hectares, that is, 42% of the total area, according to data from Inpe. It is the second most devastated protected area in the Amazon, behind the Triunfo do Xingu Protection Area, in São Félix do Xingu, in Pará state, another region dominated by livestock.

The modus operandi of the invasion, according to the rubber tapper’s representative, is the entry of people who occupy the land as “stooges” of large landowners. “The advance of livestock and soy in Rondônia is very large and puts pressure on these areas”, says Lima.

Environmentalist Edjales Brito explains that those who invaded the area are not poor people with the profile to be included in agrarian reform programs. “Porto Velho’s farmers have the largest herd in Rondônia and a large part of it is found on these illegally opened pastures in invaded public areas,” he says.

The Guajará-Mirim State Park, which has 217 thousand hectares, will keep 166 thousand hectares, if the project is sanctioned.

Livestock’s Lobby

Brito and Lima are part of a Broad Front for the Defense of Protected Areas in Rondônia, a social movement made up of 65 organizations. The Front tries to oppose the agribusiness lobby, but has failed to convince any of Rondônia’s 25 state representatives to support them.

Repórter Brasil approached the 11 parliamentarians questioning whether there was a conflict of interest because they were rural producers or because they were financed by ranchers. Only Congresswoman Cássia das Muletas (Podemos party) responded. “These are areas that have been occupied for more than a decade by small producers who lived in absolute legal uncertainty due to the irregular condition they were in,” she says.

The state representative also guarantees that the fact of having received a donation from a rancher did not influence her decision, since, according to her, the donor’s properties are far from the preservation areas affected by the bill. She also pointed out that the project foresees the creation of new reserve areas.

Indeed, there are five predicted areas, which add up to 120 thousand hectares, but which according to the opinion of the State General Attorney’s Office are regions “substantially inferior in extension to the dismantled ones, in addition to not reproducing the unique attributes found in the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve and the Guajará-Mirim State Park”.

PGE makes it clear that there is no way to compare the new areas that will be created with the two that may lose protection, as the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve and Guajará-Mirim State Park “are located in one of the most relevant and sensitive regions in the world from the environmental point of view, composing the only ecological corridor that connects several Indigenous Lands and federal and state Conservation Units”.

It is not the first anti-environmental decree of Colonel Marcos Rocha’s government. In January, he legalized gold mining on the Madeira River. “Historical day”, published the governor on Twitter. Colonel Rocha pointed out that his father-in-law was a gold digger and worked out of the law for many years. The activity leaves a trail of mercury, a toxic metal, which contaminates fish and compromises the health of those who use the water.

The dismantling of the reserve areas is yet another project in this sense, according to the Broad Front for the Defense of Protected Areas in Rondônia. If the bill comes into force, it opens the way for the legalization of tens of thousands of kilometers that have been stolen by land grabbers and deforested for livestock.

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The scene does not buzz with activity like the human ant-farms that were the hallmark of mining at Serra Pelada, in Pará. At the Yanomami Indigenous Land in Roraima, illegal mining destroys the Amazon forest in a more scattered, but no less vicious manner. Gold mining sites are dispersed over the rivers Uraricoera, Parima, Mucajaí and Couto de Magalhães. In each of them, the soil that has been exposed in extensive clearings tint the previously green landscape with a golden-brown, almost rusty hue. They are like open scars. Muddy water trickles from sediment ponds and runs into the rivers. In the sludge there is a lot of mercury, still widely used in the extraction of the coveted ore. But there is also the blood of the Yanomami people, who yearn for help.

“You’ll see many bad things from the plane; big machines. You’ll be feeling sad, as sad as ever, sad as if a person has come into your home and ruined your land. You’ll see that we are speaking the truth. You can see, so you’ll believe”, warned indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami. Recognized worldwide as a leader in the fight for the rights of the Yanomami Indigenous Land (TI), Davi Kopenawa authorized the flight over illegal mining areas on April 30. He knew there would be risks.

The plane left Boa Vista, the capital city of the state of Roraima, and took one hour to get to the first mining area. The green of the Amazon forest prevailed in the landscape during the first 30 minutes of the flight, already within the limits of the TI Yanomami, when a small plane crossed in front of the aircraft that carried the reporters. Located in the far north of Brazil, the 9.6 million hectare indigenous land lies between the states of Roraima and Amazonas and extends to the border with Venezuela. During the flight, as the number of clearings caused by devastation from illegal mining increased, so did the presence of planes and helicopters flying over the area, as if the earth and the skies belonged to illegal miners. This is the third major gold rush since the seventies.

Amazônia Real joined Repórter Brasil to carry out a comprehensive investigation of the problem of illegal mining in the largest indigenous land in Brazil. It took four months of investigation and the examination of over 5 thousand pages of documents to outline the gold path, to identify the main buyers, to understand the weaknesses in the applicable laws (which exempt buyers from liability), , to bring to light the long lasting interest of politicians in the activity and to reveal the swift approach of illegal mining and international drug trafficking. The investigation had access to two Federal Police inquiries under the Access to Information Law (LAI) and to the indictments brought by the Federal Public Prosecutors’ Office based on anti-illegal mining operations carried out at the TI Yanomami since 2012.

The Yanomami Blood Gold special report – which includes seven articles – shows that right now there is a profusion of stakeholders getting rich from illegal activities in the indigenous land of this country. This is a continuous crime that has been defended by president Jair Bolsonaro’s administration and tolerated by society.

Irregular flights

Aboard a Caravan plane, the Amazônia Real team flew over five areas of the TI Yanomami in April this year, two weeks before the shooting attack against the Palimiu community by miners linked to the criminal faction known as PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital). Paapiu, Homoxi, Xitei, Parima and Waikás were the areas identified by the Hutukara Yanomami Association (HAY) as being the most critical. Many miners are found in those areas, and there is an overt presence of rafts, machinery and speedboats, in addition to contamination of water by mercury and large-scale logging.

Despite their irregular status, planes and helicopters fly freely, with no apparent concern or fear about the fact that they are breaking into [restricted-?] air space. It looks as if the three army Special Frontier Platoons were not even there to stop them. In a miner’s sky, it is the miner who makes the rules.

“You’ll see many bad things from the plane; machines… You’ll be feeling sad, as sad as ever, sad as if a person has come into your home and ruined your land, warned indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami.

In the region of Homoxi, one aircraft kept flying in circles below the reporters’ Caravan, until we went away. The risk of “being shot by a miner”, in the words of our pilot, prevented us from flying lower and shortened the fly-over certain mining areas so as not to draw attention.

In one pilot-to-pilot conversation, the pilot working for the miners asked the pilot flying the reporters who he had aboard and whether his aircraft would land. Our pilot decided not to let him know that there was a photographer and a reporter aboard. According to him, it was safer this way.

In mining areas, planes play an essential role: they transport probes, pumps, chainsaws, washing gutters, hoses, metal detectors and mercury, all of which are necessary for the mining of gold, in addition to supplies to keep miners confined for weeks on end, leaving no doubt about who are the bosses in the area. They are the ones who collect the precious stone, prospect new mines and keep the gold activity in full swing. Cattle farmers have a mantra: “What fattens the cattle is the eye of the owner”. In mining, gold is the cattle.

A trail of destruction

During the two-hour flight, traces of destruction caused by illegal mining could be seen constantly. There are few places where our eyes could rest over stretches of preserved forest, without invaders and the huge holes caused by men and machines mining for gold. The close proximity between mining areas, non-indigenous campgrounds and clandestine airstrips and the huts and swiddens of the Yanomami communities shows how bold the invaders are and how sure they feel about their own impunity.

Invaders look like hungry pigs, according to Davi Kopenawa. “Miners are like pigs raised in the city, they dig a lot of holes looking for gold and diamonds”. Kopenawa witnessed the results and the violence of invasions during the Haximu massacre, in Upper Orinoco, Venezuela, in 1993, when miners armed with guns and knives conducted a series of attacks that killed 16 Yanomami. That was the first case of genocide recognized by the Brazilian Courts. Davi is afraid to see history repeating itself.

Flying at an altitude of 2000 feet (600 meters above the ground), reporters saw invaders working in huge craters, trying to extract gold from pits and gullies. The movement of boats on the rivers bringing supplies to miners is intense. From above, it is easy to identify the operation of a complex land, water and air logistics organization, which enables illegal gold mining at the TI Yanomami to take place at an intense and frantic scale.

The “Cicatrizes na Floresta – Evolução do Garimpo Ilegal na Terra Indígena Yanomami” (“Scars in the Forest – Evolution of Illegal Mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land”) report released in March 2021 by the Hutukara Yanomami Association (HAY) and the Wanasseduume Ye’kwana Association (Seduume), mentions the existence of about 20,000 illegal miners in the territory. However, the miners themselves report an ever higher figure. According to pilot and historic miner José Altino Machado, there would be more than 26 thousand men involved in what is known as the third gold rush in Roraima. Zé Altino, as he is better known, is chairman of the Union of Miners of the Legal Amazon and was responsible for the first and second invasions of the territory in the seventies and eighties.

Clandestine airstrips

In addition to the planes and helicopters, machinery, rafts and speedboats that Davi Kopenawa had warned about, there are countless clandestine airstrips, of different sizes, tearing through the forest. Some are right beside Yanomami huts. There are also rafts and heavy machinery alongside some communities and indigenous swiddens.

Mining sites are getting increasingly close to indigenous villages, bringing diseases with them. Between 2014 and 2019, malaria cases increased fivefold at TI Yanomami; mercury contamination has also increased.

In the Homoxi region, on the border with Venezuela, miners have built a housing compound a few meters away from an indigenous community. On one side of a bayou contaminated by mercury, one large hut and over two smaller ones are surrounded by the community’s swidden area, where food for the entire village is cultivated. On the other side of the bayou, the invaders have set their own campground. The scene is marked by all the trappings of gold mining: a silted river, huge holes excavated in the dirt and sediments ponds left behind by the flurry of illegal activity.

There are many scars left behind by miners at the TI Yanomami. Once the extraction of gold is depleted, it’s time for them to break camp, collect their makeshift blue tarp tents and head to another mining site. If the mine is “profitable”, miners spend months working it. Otherwise, they leave for another site in what they consider to be a no-man’s land. In any given mining site, the concentration of a metal as rare as gold is only a few grams per ton of mined earth.

The Brazilian Air Force, according to the Ministry of Defense, monitors the airspace 24 hours a day, and if there are suspicious and unidentified aircraft flying over TI Yanomami, there are interception procedures. In a note sent to the reporters, the ministry claims to act “permanently in the fight against cross-border and environmental crime” and that the actions are coordinated by the Military Operation Center 4, which is part of the 4th Integrated Center for Air Defense and Air Traffic Control (Cindacta), located In Manaus.

2,430 hectares destroyed

The proximity between miners and the indigenous population and the risk that this entails were described in the report produced by the Yanomami. On the one hand, there is a worsening of the epidemiological situation, including an increase in the number of cases of malaria. With deforestation, the proliferation of the Anopheles mosquito increases, leading to increased transmission of the disease. Between 2014 and 2019, the cases of malaria have quintupled in the TI Yanomami. Besides, mining activities are also related to high rates of contamination by mercury, which is used to separate the gold (the heavy and toxic metal creates an amalgam that is later incinerated and volatilized, being carried by the wind), causing long-term and irreversible damages to the health of indigenous peoples, in addition to generating economic disruption and leading to violent conflicts.

The size of the destruction caused by the illegal gold mining has reached 2,430 hectares at the TI Yanomami, which is equivalent to 2,430 soccer fields, according to the most recent report released by HAY, in May of this year. In 2020 alone, the deterioration has advanced 500 hectares, as a result of the intensification of the use of heavy and sophisticated material in the extraction of ore. Mining activities are proliferating in the territory, up the rivers, with growing groups of invaders and new routes of access to the interior of the Amazon forest.

The Waikás land, known as Tatuzão do Mutum, remains at the top of the devastation rank. In 2017, the site had a structure that, until then, was unprecedented in the indigenous lands of Roraima, which included houses, a grocery store, access to the internet and hairdressers.

Even though the area has already been the target of Army operations, it is possible to see, from the plane window, that the clandestine activities have not ceased. There are housing structures built along the bed of the Uraricoera river but also deep into the woods. Approximately 35% of the Waikás land has already been degraded.

The area is located a few minutes away from the Palimiu community, where the first shooting attack against the Yanomami people perpetrated by miners linked to the PCC took place, according to the first-hand information reported by Amazônia Real. The feeling, even from above, is one of accelerated destruction and impotence. As Kopenawa told the reporter: “our enemies are many and we are few”.

‘This gold is valuable to city people. People use gold around their necks, on their noses, to look beautiful and to get married. To me, it’s a different culture. But this gold is dirty, this gold is full of the blood of my people, the Yanomami. This is gold that kills nature, kills water life, the water is dead. I do not like to see a woman, a man, wearing gold full of the blood of my people, the Yanomami.’ Davi Kopenawa Yanomami

Yanomami Blood Gold Teams

Amazônia Real: Kátia Brasil (executive editor); Eduardo Nunomura (special editor); Alberto Cesar Araujo (photography editor), Elaíze Farias (content editor); Maria Fernanda Ribeiro, Clara Britto and Alicia Lobato (reporters); Bruno Kelly (flight photographer) and Paulo Dessana (photographer); Lívia Lemos (social media); Maria Cecília Costa (executive assistant); Giovanny Vera (maps); César Nogueira (editing); Nelson Mota (developer); and Ana Cecília Maranhão Godoy (translator).

Repórter Brasil: Ana Magalhães (journalism coordinator); Mariana Della Barba (editor); Mayra Sartorato (social media editor); Piero Locatelli and Guilherme Henrique (reporters); Joyce Cardoso (intern).

O post Lawless skies are controlled by miners apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

It is not just the sale of gold illegally mined from the Yanomami Indigenous Territory that fills the pockets of those associated to gold mines. Pilots and aircraft owners working in the area have also been getting richer, some earning as much as R$ 200,000 a week, according to the Federal Police. They are responsible for the logistics that supports the mining activities at the TI, where small aircraft are the main means of access, since the indigenous territory is far from roads and crossed by poorly navigable rivers. 

There are countless operators who control the TI’s airspace and are sure about their impunity – a certainty that arises from the lack of inspection, from the close connection of miners with politicians and even from contracts with governmental agencies. “If we disrupt their logistics, illegal miners will suffer a heavy blow”, says prosecutor Alisson Marugal. “But inspection, under the responsibility of Anac (the National Civil Aviation Agency) and FAB (Brazilian Air Force), is very fragile”.

Indictments brought by the Federal Public Prosecutors’ Office (MPF) based on three major investigative operations in the last decade reveal the large number of people involved in the logistics of illegal mining: of the 87 indicted, at least 8 were pilots and another 31 were members of “support teams”, working as clandestine radio operators and input suppliers.

To understand how this enormous network works – which enables the destruction of the Yanomami territory, families and way of life –, just look at the case of Valdir José do Nascimento, known as Japão. Described by the MPF as the “greatest promoter of illegal mining activity in the Yanomami Indigenous Land”, he owns at least three planes that are allegedly chartered to illegal miners. The Federal Police learned from of one Nascimento’s employee that in just one week more than 20 flights take place to and from the mining site. 

“It is known that each flight to the gold mine costs an average of 10 to 12 grams of gold (R$ 10 thousand to R$ 12 thousand), so in just one week, the criminal organization earned a profit of around R$ 200 thousand”, points out one of the investigations. 

A daily planner seized by the investigators shows that Nascimento chartered at least 221 flights for other offenders. Those flights were used not only to transport the gold, but also to transport workers, food, fuel and instruments – essential tools for extracting the metal. Weapons and ammunition were also shipped and sold by Nascimento to other miners in the area.

‘If we disrupt their logistics, illegal miners will suffer a heavy blow’, says prosecutor Alisson Marugal

Nascimento’s fleet of planes, however, is even larger than what appears in the investigations. There are currently eight aircraft registered under his name, according to Anac records: seven single-engine aircraft manufactured by Cessna (which can hold up to four passengers) and one twin-engine by manufactured by Embraer (which can hold up to nine passengers). All were manufactured back in the 1970s, four are subject to flight restrictions imposed by Anac.

Nascimento’s role in mining went beyond the air charter. He also owned ferries used in the extraction of gold and headed a network of miners, suppliers of fuel, weapons and ammunition. According to the MPF, his group “has a complete vertical domain of the mining activity”, including control of sales to intermediaries in Boa Vista. Nascimento was investigated as part of the Xawara operation, the first by the MPF to scrutinize the mining in the Indigenous Territory, in 2012. Nascimento did not respond to the reporters’ calls.

Airports that provide support to miners operate without restrictions

Impunity is also the rule when it comes to land-based logistical support, operated from the outskirts of Boa Vista, where the Barra dos Ventos aerodrome is located – the main departure and arrival point for flights to and from the TI. This is where owners park their planes, where planes undergo maintenance and the departure point for flights, according to the Federal Police.

The airport is controlled by Adão de Pinho Bezerra, whose fleet carries, in addition to food, fuel and machinery, a series of misdemeanors. Even before his planes were found to be part of the illegal mining logistics, Bezerra had been indicted by the MPF-RR in operation Metastase for fraud in contracts and bidding procedures for air charters supplied to Funasa, in 2007. 

Despite the findings of the Federal Police, the airport is still operating, according to Anac. It remains  open and continues to be used for air traffic heading for illegal mining sites. The reporters tried to contact Bezerra through his attorney but got no answer. 

Cases such as those of Nascimento and Bezerra show how actions against the logistics of mining have been insufficient. “Weakening this network is one of our strongest tools to end illegal mining”, says Attorney Marugal. “The destruction of [illegal]airstrips, which is the responsibility of the Army, the Federal Police and Ibama, actually happens. But shortly thereafter another airstrip is built in their place”.

‘Deactivating airstrips costs a lot for the government and very little for criminals, who rebuild them in two weeks. It is essential to auction off the planes’, says the Association of the Yekuana People of Brazil.

In order to avoid this scenario, the Yanomami ask, in addition to more control over the TI airspace, the assignment of agents to prevent the building of new clandestine airstrips – there are currently 36 of them, mostly used by miners. In a letter sent to the Federal Police, the indigenous people claim that the simple destruction of the airstrips  is not enough; they argue that any plane found [at illegal airstrips] should be auctioned off, or even used by the government itself to inspect the land later on. 

“Deactivating airstrips costs a lot for the government and very little for criminals, who rebuild them in two weeks”, says the Association of the Yekuana People of Brazil”  . It is essential to auction off the planes and other assets such as trucks used in the commission of crime, they could be made available to Funai, the Federal Police, ICMbio and Sesai”.

Geographer Estevão Benfica Senra, who researches the issue of illegal gold mining says that “disrupting logistics” should be a priority in the fight against illegal mining. For Senra, the strictest control would include destroying airstrips, inspecting state-owned aerodromes and re-registering and inspecting all planes that pass through the location.

“With such disruption, you would create a situation where the miners themselves would volunteer to leave the area”, says Senra. According to him, even if logistical control did not prevent all mining activity at the site, it would reduce the problem to a more manageable scale. The specialist emphasizes that the solution to the problem would involve joint action from different government agencies, such as Anac, Funai, the Ministry of Defense and the National Mining Agency. 

When contacted, Funai stated that “it recognizes the existence of clandestine airstrips located in indigenous areas, but it cannot accurately state their number”. The foundation also said that it “supports the Ministry of Defense and the Federal Police in inspections of clandestine airfields in the interior of Indigenous Lands”. Funai did not respond to inquiries about the number of operations and specific actions with this purpose.

Anac stated that the agency “does not have legal jurisdiction to destroy or interdict clandestine airstrips”. According to Anac, “any potential violation that is identified and that is not under the jurisdiction of the Agency is reported to the Public Prosecutors’ Office and to the police authorities so that the appropriate measures can be taken”.

The Ministry of Defense informed that “the Brazilian Army continues to assist Funai in the destruction of clandestine airstrips at TI Yanomami, when requested by that Foundation.” The Ministry did not provide further details about the work to curb the operation of clandestine airstrips and suspicious aircraft.

Relationship with politicians

The records of Federal Police investigations obtained by Repórter Brasil in partnership with Amazônia Real under the Access to Information Law also reveal the relationship between pilots accused of involvement with miners and politicians in the state of Roraima. 

Through phone tapping, the federal agents identified calls from pilot Thiago Cappelle to state congressman Marcelo Cabral (MDB) and to Guilherme Campos, the son of the former governor of Roraima Suely Campos (PP).

Cabral’s press office informed that the relationship with the pilot “was strictly business-related”. According to the note sent to the reporters, “in 2018, the congressman needed to fulfill his official duties in cities and towns in the interior of the state, far from the capital, Boa Vista”. The reporters were unable to contact Guilherme Campos.

In addition, Cappelle acquired aircraft prefix PT-KEM from Senator Chico Rodrigues (DEM-RR), infamous for being caught by the Federal Police in October last year, trying to hide R$ 33 thousand in his underwear, during an operation at his home, in Boa Vista. 

In fact, this aircraft has a storied past. As reported by Repórter Brasil in March, the senator owned this plane from June 13, 2011 to February 28, 2018, according to a certificate issued by Anac. The plane entered the territory airspace several times between 2018 and 2019. First, while under the property of the senator, who had also been governor of Roraima, and later under the command of Cappelle.

Chico Rodrigues dodged the investigation, but the same cannot be said about his nephew, Leonardo Rodrigues Moreira. According to testimony obtained by the Federal Police investigation, Leonardo, who was a city councilman in Boa Vista between 2016 and 2020, owned a mine in the indigenous land. He was never indicted by the MPF.

Senator Chico Rodrigues told Repórter Brasil, in March, that “at the time of the facts, he had already transferred ownership [of the plane]”, but he did not send documents to back up this information. He also said, through his press office, that during the period in which he actually owned the aircraft, “he did not fly over any illegal mining site”.  

Government contracts

In addition to being close to politicians, at least two of the owners of the aircraft that flew over the mines have contracts with government agencies. In practice, the Brazilian taxpayer’s money ends up remunerating those who work and provide logistical support for illegal miners.

Cappelle, indicted by the Roraima MPF by the MPF in 2020 for his involvement in a criminal organization, is one of those cases. A document obtained by Repórter Brasil shows that he was appointed, in 2015, to a commissioned position as a pilot for the Roraima Military Household. Neither Cappelle nor the Roraima Security Department responded to e-mails from the reporters.

Another owner of an aircraft caught by the indigenous people flying over mining areas is Rodrigo Martins de Mello, owner of Voare and Icaraí Turismo Taxi Aéreo. A survey carried out by the indigenous people shows that a helicopter belonging to Mello made daily flights to the mining region. 

Icaraí Turismo Táxi Aéreo has signed contracts with the Ministry of Health for services on Yanomami land during the pandemic. The company received R$ 24.3 million from the public coffers, R$ 17 million of which were paid during the Jair Bolsonaro administration, according to O Globo newspaper. 

Last year, the National Civil Aviation Agency (Anac) initiated proceedings to investigate possible irregularities committed by Icaraí Turismo Táxi Aéreo. Since June 17, 2020, the company’s operations have been suspended, due to a decision issued by Anac. Still, the company continued transporting indigenous people and DSEI teams, according to O Globo. 

The Ministry of Health stated that “all contracts follow the law strictly and any irregularities must be investigated by the police authorities.” Icaraí Turismo Taxi Aéreo did not respond to questions submitted by the reporters.

The Federal Police and the MPF suspect that Mello’s aircraft are involved in the scheme conducted by Pedro Emiliano Garcia, also known as Pedro Prancheta, convicted of genocide against the Yanomami people in the 1990s who, according to the MPF’s charges, continues to operate in illegal mining sites. Prancheta was indicted by the MPF in three cases involving illegal mining at the TI, criminal organization, environmental damages, misappropriation of federal resources and clandestine communication. 

Yanomami Blood Gold Teams

Amazônia Real: Kátia Brasil (executive editor); Eduardo Nunomura (special editor); Alberto Cesar Araujo (photography editor), Elaíze Farias (content editor); Maria Fernanda Ribeiro, Elisa de Oliveira and Alicia Lobato (reporters); Bruno Kelly (flight photographer) and Paulo Dessana (photographer); Lívia Lemos (social media); Maria Cecília Costa (executive assistant); Giovanny Vera (maps); César Nogueira (editing); Nelson Mota (developer) and Ana Cecilia Maranhão Godoy (translator).

Repórter Brasil: Ana Magalhães (journalism coordinator); Mariana Della Barba (editor); Mayra Sartorato (social media editor); Piero Locatelli and Guilherme Henrique (reporters); Joyce Cardoso (intern).

O post R$ 200,000: that’s how much a pilot working for miners makes a week apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

In the capital city of Roraima, Boa Vista, part of the gold illegally extracted from TI Yanomami circulates freely among dozens of jewelry stores. Rua do Ouro  is a traditional center for these small businesses, where many miners go to sell the gold they have extracted. The atmosphere is not a friendly one and only a few customers roam the area. But it took just three days for the Amazonia Real reporters to witness the purchase and sale of illegal gold.

It was almost the end of business hours, on an April afternoon, when the reporters were invited into the Opalo store, on Avenida Benjamin Constant, by the shop assistant. The assistant, who did not know she was talking to journalists, invited the reporters in after confirming that the shop sold gold earrings. As soon as we stepped into the store, the door was locked and one of the owners, identified as Willians Suarez, brought in a black jewelry display from the back. He displayed the pieces on the counter and claimed that they were guaranteed and certified. Without a window or exposed jewelry, the interior of the establishment looks more like a humble office than a glitzy jewelry store.

While the reporters asked about price and payment methods, a man entered the shop and asked if the place was buying “gold from the mines”. The owner replied in the affirmative. It was not possible to tell if the man was a miner, a mine owner or a middleman. He arrived on a motorcycle, wearing denim shorts and sandals.

A few minutes later, while the reporters were still inside the store, a woman, wearing a protective mask with the logo of the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai), came in and asked the same question. The shopkeeper Suarez once again said “I’ll buy everything”. The door was still locked. We left the shop but continued to follow the action from the outside.

The woman, identified as physiotherapist Thatiana Almeida, didn’t even bother to park her car. She left the car running, with the headlights on, far from the curb while she went into the Opalo store. Moments later, she walked out of the jewelry store, took a package from the glove compartment, and went back inside. The reporters identified the employee of the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai), of the Ministry of Health, through the license plate of her car, a black Corolla, license plate NOY-1G90 registered in the name of a family member. The same car appears in a post on Thatiana’s social network on December 23, 2020.

On a social network, the physiotherapist informs that she has worked as a nurse at Sesai since 2016. In a post on April 12, she appears in photos vaccinating Yanomami children. One of the photos is captioned “15-day mission, I thank God for my successful work and continue to care and do my best for those who need the most, the indigenous people, the Yanomami people”.

The exchange of vaccines for gold by Sesai employees has been the target of a complaint filed by the Hutukara Associação Yanomami to the Federal Public Prosecutors’ Office. In April, territory leaders reported that vaccine doses were being sold to miners in exchange for gold. The Mixed Parliamentary Front in Defense of Indigenous Peoples also reported the case to the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) on Covid.

The reporters tried to talk to Thatiana Almeida by telephone and on the social network. Her phone went to voicemail during the three days the reporters tried to call her. After a private message was sent to her on the social network, she deleted her profile. The reporters also sent her a WhatsApp message, but got no answer.

The Ministry of Health informed, via its press office, that it will investigate the allegations and that it is available to the authorities to provide all necessary information.

Regarding the investigations into the exchange of vaccine for gold reported by the Hutukara Association, the Federal Public Prosecutors’ Office informed that the agency “sent an official letter to Dseis (Special Indigenous Sanitary District), held a meeting with the agencies involved and scheduled another meeting for June 28 to address these issues affecting the IT”.

Willians Suarez, of Opalo jewelry, was contacted by telephone, but could not be found. He also didn’t respond to messages sent to his social media profile.

The stores at Rua do Ouro

Rua do Ouro was established at the height of the gold rush, in the 1980s and 1990s, when there were more than 40,000 illegal miners working at the indigenous territory. Business boomed and the shops expanded to three other streets: Avenida Benjamin Constant, Rua Cecília Brasil and Rua Araújo Filho, all in downtown Boa Vista. The reporters counted 39 stores selling jewelry and buying gold at these addresses, but some do not have storefronts, which means that their owners cannot be identified through the Federal Revenue registry. Only 19 stores have active records (CNPJs) with the Federal Revenue Office. Of these, at least eight jewelry stores and 14 businessmen or employees were investigated by the Federal Police for direct involvement in the purchase of gold originating from illegal mines in Roraima.

In 1989, Rua do Ouro was identified in an article on The New York Times as a hub for the trade of ore coming from the Yanomami indigenous territory. Today, the street still has the same rows of small stores, all jammed together, even though many shop owners have migrated their businesses to other less targeted areas of the city, such as Avenida Ataíde Teive and Avenida Solón Rodrigues Pessoa, a few kilometers away.

The shops at Rua do Ouro have been in the crosshairs of the Federal Police (PF) for years, as can be seen from the reports of the three main operations carried out against gold mining in Yanomami Land since 2012. During this period, the following jewelry stores were investigated and indicted: Du Ouro, Naza Joias, Gold Joias, Safira, Aliança, Guimarães Ouro, Ouro Mil and Princesse Joias.

The names leave no doubt, but from the modest signs on the storefronts in these and other shops that operate there – many hand-painted – an unsuspecting visitor might not even notice that there is a strong trade of gold and jewelry going on in the area. Today, there are practically no store windows with pieces on display and most stores seem to be closed. During business hours, there are almost always men, alone or in groups, guarding the entrances to the stores.

An ode to miners

Rua do Ouro emerged in a privileged location at downtown Boa Vista, a few meters away from the Civic Center (“Praça do Centro Cívico”), where Senador Hélio Campos Palace is located, the official seat of the state executive branch. Roraima is currently governed by Antonio Denarium (no-party), an ally to President Jair Bolsonaro.

Right in the middle of Praça do Centro Cívico, the Monumento ao Garimpeiro  (Monument to Miners) was built in the 1960s, a rubber mortar and aluminum statue more than seven meters tall, set on a reflecting pool. The sculpture shows a man using a gold pan, a container with a concave bottom used to wash sand that contains gold or diamonds and was commissioned by Hélio da Costa Campos, governor of the Federal Territory of Roraima between 1967 and 1969 and 1970 to 1974.

The statute was supposed to be a symbol of what the central government planned in terms of population densification in the region, which had been identified as very rich in ore, but lacking in labor to explore it. Before gold, diamond mining was explored in Roraima, on the border with Guyana, during the Getúlio Vargas administration.

It was in front of the Monument to Miners that, on April 27, 2021, days before the miners began a series of shooting attacks against indigenous people and public security agents at the Yanomami community of Perimiu, “mining entrepreneurs” took to the streets to defend the legalization of the activity.

From the top of a car and over a loudspeaker, protesters shouted that they were not afraid of inspectors or authorities and summoned others to rally at the headquarters of Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) against the apprehensions of machinery. “We want the same respect as a drug dealer in Rio de Janeiro”, shouted one of the protesters over the car loudspeaker. They know that part of the population of Roraima supports the criminal activity of gold extraction in indigenous territories.

Ghost stores

Some establishments linked to the gold trade maintain active registrations with the Federal Revenue Office but are “non-existent” in real life; there is no store open to the public. They were mentioned in the reports of the Federal Police as sellers of Yanomami blood gold. The jeweler Gold Joias is part of this group and, after the Warari Koxi operation, it was charged with being part of a scheme to send illegal gold to Distribuidora de Títulos e Valores Mobiliários (DTVM) Ourominas, in São Paulo.

A goldsmith who has worked in jewelry stores at Rua do Ouro and its surroundings for more than a decade, and whose identity will be preserved, told the Amazônia Real reporters that in most stores the few pieces of jewelry on display in the rare store windows are just a disguise. The real business, the buying and selling of illegal gold, takes place in the back. There, the ore usually arrives raw, either as a powder or stone, and it is up to the goldsmith to transform the material into gold bars.

“But only 1% of the gold stays here. The gold leaves the mines with a predefined destination. What do miners and buyers do? They take the balance for the week or month, wrap it up and give the package to a pilot to bring into town. I’ve seen a lot of that, the pilot arrives with 10 small packets of gold, place them on my desk and say ‘These belong to so-and-so. Here is the list, the contacts, the people who will buy it and who will pay for it’”, said the goldsmith.

Intermediaries and middlemen

According to this source, most of the owners of jewelry stores involved in the illegal gold scheme are just a name on the paper, strawmen. The real owners are investors based in the South and Southeast regions of the country. He also said that there are buyers from abroad who arrive by plane or helicopter and go straight down to the mines, some with armed security guards, to buy gold directly from the source– and thus pay less . Others travel only to Boa Vista, where they have a network of intermediaries and jewelers. 

When a businessman goes to the airstrip or sends someone to the mine, he buys the gold and sends it along the business path. But when the miners come to the city, they first sell to local businessmen, who then sell to others. And sometimes businessmen don’t want to go all the way to the airstrip, inside the mining area, because they think it’s too dangerous, so they come to Boa Vista.

In those cases, the gold owner makes contacts, entices goldsmiths, other businessmen, sets up a scheme to purchase gold and injects money. “So, what happens is that the jewelry store is just a front, that person is just a strawman, because the owner of the money is a big investor from a different place.”

In the crosshairs of the Federal Police

In another store at Rua do Ouro, Princesse, the owner of the place, Soraya Naim Sajim, said that it was very common for people to show up trying to sell gold from the mines. It is an almost daily occurrence, but she denied accepting this kind of transaction. Princesse has been a target of a Federal Police investigation for being in possession of diamonds without proof of origin. At the facility, 18 rough diamond stones were found on May 7, 2015, while the police carried out a search and seizure warrant.

By phone, Soraya also told the reporters that the jewelry store only sells pieces manufactured in São Paulo and Minas Gerais. She also stated that the diamond found by the police “had been in the vault for many years. It had no commercial value. We were able to show this to them (the Federal Police). They were so-called industrial (stones), they cannot be cut”. “We never worked with anything  illegal”.

At Joalheria Aliança, owned by Jackson Gomes Lima, who was also targeted by the Federal Police in 2015 for buying illegal gold from TI Yanomami, a sales assistant informed that all the jewelry pieces sold at the store are manufactured using scrap gold. In other words, those pieces are allegedly manufactured using gold from old pendants, necklaces and earrings that people no longer want.

Over the phone, Jackson Lima also denied buying gold from mines. “Here nobody buys from Yanomami mines. We work with scrap. We use products purchased from auctions carried out by Caixa [Econômica Federal]. I don’t know why our store was mentioned by the PF”, he told the reporters.

Seven stores at Rua do Ouro and the surrounding area form a network linked to a single family: the Venâncio family, who come from the municipality of Pauini, in Amazonas.

One of the businessman is José Raimundo de Castro Venâncio, owner of the Ouro Mil jewelry store. He was investigated by the Federal Police in 2015 in operation Warari Koxi, which targeted jewelry stores and DTVMs involved in the purchase and sale of illegal gold from TI Yanomami. DTVMs are financial companies authorized by the Central Bank to sell gold. They are located at Avenida Paulista, in the capital of São Paulo. In the course of the investigation, he testified and confirmed that he had bought gold from the mines and had done business with DTVM Ourominas from 1988 to 1990. For two days, the reporters tried to contact Ouro Mil through the telephone number registered with the Federal Revenue Office, but the calls went unanswered.

Read about the role of DTVMs in the sale of illegal gold

In May 2015, the Federal Police seized 22 grams of raw gold mined in indigenous land at Ouro Mil. The company is the oldest in the family and was registered with the Federal Revenue Office in 1990. In 2004, Venâncio failed in his attempt to be elected city councilman in Boa Vista, representing the PPS party. Curiously enough, when rendering accounts to the Electoral Courts, the gold trader did not declare any assets.

Another point that stands out are the constant changes in the storefronts and addresses of stores in the Rua do Ouro region. Safira Joias, which was implicated in operations Xawara and Warari Koxi, still has an active registration with the Federal Revenue Office, but its storefront currently shows a different name: “Caraúbas Joias”. The reporters did not identify a CNPJ registration number for this establishment with the Revenue Office, or through internet searches. Safira Joias is also implicated in the investigation of operation Tori, launched in 2017.

That year, a Federal Police report pointed out the information that one of the jewelers’ partners at the time, in addition to buying illegal gold from TI Yanomami, also lent money to at least three aircraft owners to buy supplies for miners who were working in the field. The list of orders made by the miners was transmitted by radio to an illegal center in Boa Vista, where purchases were made and then shipped out to them. In these negotiations, the money lent by the businessman to the aircraft owners was deducted from future freight costs relating to the transportation of gold, according to police. The report tried to contact Safira by phone through the number registered with the Federal Revenue Office, but the calls went unanswered.

Yanomami Blood Gold Teams

Amazônia Real: Kátia Brasil (executive editor); Eduardo Nunomura (special editor); Alberto Cesar Araujo (photography editor), Elaíze Farias (content editor); Maria Fernanda Ribeiro, Clara Britto and Alicia Lobato (reporters); Bruno Kelly (flight photographer) and Paulo Dessana (photographer); Lívia Lemos (social media); Maria Cecília Costa (executive assistant); Giovanny Vera (maps); César Nogueira (editing); Nelson Mota (developer); and Ana Cecilia Maranhão Godoy (translator).

Repórter Brasil: Ana Magalhães (journalism coordinator); Mariana Della Barba (editor); Mayra Sartorato (social media editor); Piero Locatelli and Guilherme Henrique (reporters); Joyce Cardoso (intern).

O post ‘I’ll buy everything’: Yanomami gold is freely sold at Rua do Ouro apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

As he boarded a commercial bus in Boa Vista, Roraima, heading for Manaus, Amazonas, Raimundo had no idea that he was being awaited by Federal Police agents at the bus station. When he reached his destination, he was surprised by the police, who had been investigating him on account of a cocaine trafficking tip-off.

No drug was not found with Raimundo, but he carried two gold bars weighing approximately 800 grams, taken from the Yanomami Indigenous Territory – the result of illegal mining, according to Brazilian legislation, which prohibits mining activities in indigenous areas or reservations. The gold would be delivered to taxi driver Paulo Clemente Lopes, identified by the Federal Police as a representative of the company Ourominas in Manaus. 

Even before this incident, which took place in April 2015, Ourominas and its representative, Paulo Clemente, had been in the crosshairs of police officers. Paulo Clemente had been identified by a gold middleman who had been approached by military police officers on a bus trip crossing the border between Roraima and Amazonas, when he stated that the R$90,000 in cash that he carried – part of which was found lodged in his underwear – was the result of the sale of 1 kilo of gold to the Ourominas representative. 

Raimundo and the middleman caught with cash stashed in his underwear traveled to Manaus as employees of the company Gold Jóias, one of dozens of businesses that buy and sell gold extracted from TI Yanomami at the so-called Rua do Ouro (Gold Street), in Boa Vista. Phone conversations show intense negotiations between Paulo Clemente, from Ourominas, and the owners of Gold Jóias: Andreia Cavalcanti Lima and Manoel Pereira Souza Neto. All had been indicted by the Federal Public Prosecutors’ Office (MPF) in 2017 due to crimes against the economic order. The store continues to operate normally. Ourominas does too.

Read the article about Rua do Ouro, in Boa Vista

The records of Federal Police investigations made available to Repórter Brasil under the Access to Information Law have identified some of the different companies involved in the purchase of gold originating from TI Yanomami. Together, the records of the investigations amount to over 5,000 pages that show how the sale of metal gains a veneer of legality, despite its illegal origins.

The scheme involves both small gold stores, such as Gold Joias, DU Gold, Naza Joias and Itaituba Metais and larger companies, based in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In addition to Ourominas, Dillon, Carol, FD’Gold and Coluna are also suspected of irregularities. These are known as Securities Distributors (DTVMs) – companies that are part of the financial system which have authorization from the Central Bank to buy gold. A major jewelry chain, HStern, was also mentioned at least twice in the records of the Federal Police investigations. 

The documents also shed light on how the clandestine scheme works. First, some of the illegally mined Yanomami gold goes directly to neighboring countries (Venezuela, Suriname and French Guiana) to be sold. Another part goes to Boa Vista, where it is purchased by the small jewelry stores on Rua do Ouro – even though they lack the Central Bank’s license to buy gold. 

These middlemen, in turn, usually go to Manaus or Itaituba (Pará), where gold is sold to the DTVMs. Legalization takes place mainly in these two cities in a “grotesque” manner, in the words of the MPF prosecutor in Itaituba, Paulo de Tarso. When the middleman sells to a DTVM, he manually fills out an invoice declaring that the gold came from a legal mine – those covered by the so-called Permissão de Lavras Garimpeiras, which are mines whose activities are authorized by the National Mining Agency (ANM). As there are no legal mines in Roraima, the middlemen declare that the gold originating from TI Yanomami actually came from mines in Pará and Amazonas.

Using these fabricated invoices, the gold in the possession of the DTVMs becomes “legalized”. From then on, this gold can be freely traded – sold to both financial institutions and large jewelry stores, both locally and overseas. 

There are five DTVMs that appear, in different contexts, in the PF documents that resulted from three large joint operations to combat illegal gold mining in TI Yanomami: Xawara (2012), Koxi (2015) and Tori (2017), also used as a basis for the indictments. The unprecedented investigation by Repórter Brasil shows that gold tainted by Yanomami blood circulates freely, benefiting from the fragile legislation that regulates the sector.

Law No.12,844/2013, which regulates the purchase, sale and transport of gold in the country, states that the sale of gold relies on the good faith of the seller – thus exempting buyers from any responsibility. In addition, information about the origin of the gold is self-declared (by the seller) when filling out the invoice, which means that this is a fraud-prone scheme. 

“The claims made by gold buyers [about their innocence] are based on this [the law], responsibility is imputed to sellers”, says federal prosecutor Paulo de Tarso. “The owner of a DTVM that buys gold can acquire illegally sourced metal relying on a presumed good faith, and the seller is responsible for stating where the gold comes from. In short: a company like Ourominas is the buyer and whoever sold the gold was the one who lied, according to the law”, he concludes. 

In addition to criticizing the legal framework surrounding the gold market in Brazil, the prosecutor also disapproves of the lack of inspection by the ANM on the mining permits and gold transactions, the issuance of (municipal and state) environmental licenses for mining operations (an activity that is considered, by law, as low-impact) and the fact that the Central Bank only inspects DTVMs (which excludes small intermediary companies). “We have a very truncated legislation”, criticizes the prosecutor in an interview with Repórter Brasil.

At least 49 tons of illegal gold in the country were laundered between 2019 and 2020, i.e., their origin was concealed and the gold was introduced into trade as a legal product, according to a study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais carried out at the request of the MPF. This laundering of gold generated a socio-environmental loss in the amount of R$9.8 billion for the Amazon, according to the researchers.

References to HStern 

Regarded as one of the major jewelry chains in the world, HStern is mentioned by Paulo Clemente, from Ourominas, in a conversation tapped by the Federal Police. The company was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1945 and today has stores in New York, Moscow and London. It is known for producing luxurious pieces, that have been worn by Angelina Jolie and Beyoncé. The brand’s gold rings can cost up to R$29 thousand. But part of Hstern’s production uses gold mined at TI Yanomami.

In a conversation in April 2015, recorded by the police, Paulo Clemente asked Andreia Cavalcanti Lima, owner of Gold Joias, in Boa Vista, to set aside 5 kilos of gold for a trip to São Paulo that would take place in the near future. Paulo Clemente said that a meeting was scheduled “with HStern people” during that trip, without specifying the individuals who would attend the meeting. 

In other occasion, the partner and founder of Ourominas, Juarez de Oliveira Filho, also makes reference to HStern in a statement he gave to investigators. When asked by the Federal Police whether he sold gold to the jewelry chain, he did not deny it, saying only that he “sold very little” to that company. 

Despite the tapped conversation, Paulo Clemente told the Federal Police that he did not remember the dialogue with Andréia and that he did not know HStern representatives either. No H.Stern employee was heard by the Federal Police during its investigations. 

Asked about the negotiations with HStern, Ourominas informed that “commercial information is protected by fiscal and banking secrecy”. HStern did not respond to repeated attempts of email and telephone contact made by Repórter Brasil. 

The millionaire lobbyist

If, on the one hand, illegal gold extracted from indigenous lands may be found in the windows of a luxury jewelry store, on the other hand, this same gold is enriching different players involved in the scheme. One of the main cores of the scheme would be the DTVMs. Repórter Brasil analyzed the financial statements of three DTVMs that have already been investigated by the Federal Police. The one that showed the highest profitability last year was F.D’Gold: the company declared net profits of R$ 32.8 million in 2020. 

Its owner, Dirceu Frederico Sobrinho, also owns of a small fortune resulting from decades of mining work. In 2018, he ran for the office of 1^st alternate of senator Flexa Ribeiro (PSDB-PA), declaring a personal net worth of R$ 20.3 million. In addition to apartments in São Paulo and farms in Pará, his assets include a backhoe (with a declared value of R$450 thousand) and 50% of the shares of F.D’Gold, with a value of R$2 million.

In addition to F.D’ Gold, Dirceu Sobrinho owns D’Gold and Mineradora Ouro Roxo. He also holds 32 mining permits, 29 of them in Itaituba and another three in Jacareacanga, Pará, obtained between 1995 and 2007. The city in Pará has been the site of illegal mining activities carried out at the Munduruku Indigenous Land , as reported by Amazônia Real. 

“Dirceu controls almost the entire chain, as he owns the mine, the small stores that buy the gold and one of the largest DTVMs in the country”, said a source who asked not to be identified. 

Since 2013, Dirceu Sobrinho has been chairman of Anoro (the National Gold Association), an entity that brings together sector member companies and a vocal advocate for the licensing of mining activities on indigenous lands. 

The businessman enjoys a good reputation among representatives of the highest echelon of the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro (no party). He met with Vice President Hamilton Mourão in July 2019 to defend mining on indigenous lands. Another visit to the Planalto Palace took place two months later, in a meeting with Onyx Lorenzoni (General Secretariat), Ricardo Salles (then Environment Minister) and retired General Augusto Heleno (Institutional Security Office ), as reported by Época magazine. 

“The owner of F.D’Gold DTVM, the country’s third-largest payer of CFEM [tax] on gold mining in the first four months of 2020, the chairman of Anoro is the most vocal lobbyist for the legalization of mining activities, with which he has been involved since the eighties”, said a study published by Instituto Escolhas, an organization that acts in the defense of better regulation of the sector and traceability of ore. 

Sobrinho, who is a former secretary of the Environment for Itaituba, has been sued for environmental damages in the Tapajós Environmental Protection Area, in the Pará municipalities of Jacareacanga and Itaituba.

In the records of the case that charged him with “crimes of money laundering or hiding of assets”, the lobbyist obtained a habeas corpus, in 2019, leading to the dismissal of the Federal Police investigation on atypical financial transactions detected by Coaf (the Council for Control of Financial Activities) relating to the F. D’ Gold accounts between 2013 and 2014.

“There is a difficulty in producing evidence [to incriminate illegal buyers]”, says Larissa Rodrigues, project manager at Instituto Escolhas. “The Federal Police arrives at a small store in Itaituba, which they know is fraudulent, only to find a heap of papers, with several Mining Permit numbers. They would have to inspect all of those small stores to produce evidence, except that the gold is coming from somewhere else. Without the traceability of gold, which does not exist today, there is nothing to do”.

The specialist also claims that, oftentimes, the owners of legal mines encourage the exploration of the metal in prohibited areas to “launder the gold” – and guarantee their own gains. “It’s similar to what happens with soy and cattle. You mix soy or cattle produced in illegal areas with soy or cattle from the legal areas and then there’s no telling them apart”.

The researcher also highlights the ease of transporting the metal and its valorization in recent years, which encourages illegal activity. “If there’s fraud with logging, which involves huge pieces of wood, imagine with gold, which you can hide in your pocket”, she analyzes.

There is also another link in the chain that makes inspection and investigations difficult in the sector: the so-called Gold Purchase Stations, which operate as “arms” of the DTVMs, established in places outside the company’s headquarters – predominantly in cities like Manaus or Itaituba. The problem is that the purchase stations can be operated by other entities, with different CNPJs, which makes the chain all the more complex. 

In a statement, Dirceu Sobrinho said that his companies “strictly follow all current laws and do not condone the illegal extraction of gold, actively fighting any irregular and/or illegal action” and that “all company actions were duly registered in detail and, thus, there are no grounds to maintain an investigation”. Sobrinho also stated, through his press office, that “it is necessary to focus on regulating the mining activity in the permitted areas, respecting the current legislation. Regularization is a priority for the entire sector and must also be so for Brazilian society as a whole”. Read the full statement here.

The scheming Ourominas

Created in the early 1980s, when Juarez de Oliveira Filho started earning money as a miner in Mato Grosso, today Ourominas has more than 80 stores across the country. Headquartered in São Paulo, but with so-called Gold Purchase Stations  in cities such as Itaituba (PA) and Peixoto de Azevedo (MT), the company had a declared net income of R$ 498 thousand in the first half of 2019, according to the company’s published balance sheet. 

The businessman accumulates good results from his activities in the sector but is also facing legal challenges. Oliveira Filho is a defendant in at least six lawsuits under the jurisdiction of TRF 1, which involve work analogous to slavery, environmental damages, misrepresentation, smuggling, money laundering and concealing of assets. 

His company was also indicted by the MPF in a public civil action in July 2019, accused of acquiring illegal gold in the region of Óbidos (Pará), close to the Z’oé Indigenous Land. At the time, the branch of Ourominas in Santarém bought almost 611 kilos of illegal gold, in operations totaling around R$ 70 million. 

According to the Amazon Task Force, the Ourominas Gold Purchasing Station in Santarém had a scheme set up to facilitate metal laundering: it maintained a  database with information on legalized mines to be used in invoices to disguise the actual origin of the illegal gold. In this case, it was the buyer (Ourominas) itself that filled in the fraudulent information, making seller’s life easier.

The majority partner of Ourominas was also the target of the Minamata operation, launched by the Federal Police in 2017 to investigate the possible cooptation of the Cooperativa de Garimpeiros do Lourenço Ltda (Coogal) by politicians and businessmen, including Juarez de Oliveira Filho. Cooperative workers were found to be subjected to slavery-like conditions by labor inspectors (Ministry of Economy), and there are indications that mining activities in Calçoene (Amapá) have contaminated the region’s rivers through the use of mercury. 

Documents relating to TI Yanomami also raise the suspicion that businessmen from Ourominas may have benefited from privileged information during the investigations into illegal mining in the region. In 2015, in the early morning hours before the Federal Police’s search and seizure operation took place, Juarez asked Aquiles Pereira Salerno Junior, also a partner in the company, to go to one of the offices and “check if everything was right” because “surely the police would be heading there”. 

An hour later, an employee of Ourominas, Paulo Clemente’s wife, called the company’s second-in-command detailing the search conducted by the Federal Police  at her home. Achilles asked her to erase all records of phone calls from her phone. In the afternoon, Paulo Clemente called Aquiles and said he had denied any employment relationship with Ourominas but revealed that “the pressure was on”. 

Among the partners of Ourominas, only Aquiles Salerno was indicted by the MPF as a result of the Warari Koxi operation, due to an attempt to destroy evidence. The Federal Police discovered that Paulo Clemente’s wife gave up her own cell phone during the search and seizure but hid her husband’s phone.

‘The difficulty in holding certain companies criminally responsible is also due to the fact that the owner of Ourominas, for example, is domiciled in São Paulo. He does not buy [gold] directly. He has a local partner who gets his hands dirty. If things go wrong, he will say that he didn’t know what was going on.’ Paulo de Tarso

Alisson Marugal, who is also federal prosecutor, from the MPF in Roraima, who specializes in indigenous issues, agrees that it is difficult to produce documents that incriminate large businessmen involved in illegal mining. “There is a flaw in the investigations, which have yet to reach these major players. There are businessmen in the air transportation sector, politicians… On the other hand, it must be said that there is a very large number of people who pursue mining activities. When they dismantle a criminal cell, three or four appear in its place. More efficiency is needed, especially when it comes to major players”, he told Repórter Brasil.

Ourominas stated, in a note, that “after a long inquisitorial and investigative phase that takes place during the police investigation, it was concluded that neither the company OM nor its partners participated in the investigated conducts and, therefore, they are not parties to the criminal action, i.e., they are not defendants in the case”. 

Nevertheless, a survey carried out in the TRF 1 database shows that Aquiles Salerno, the company’s second-in-command, is a defendant in at least two lawsuits: one for “crimes against the economic order” and another for “crimes of money laundering or hiding of assets”. Besides Salerno, Paulo Clemente Lopes is also a defendant in a lawsuit originating in “crimes against the economic order”. Regarding these cases, all that Ourominas said was that they were subject to court secrecy and that, in the case of Salerno, “all information will be provided in court”. 

Asked again about the processes involving one of the company’s partners, Ourominas repeated that “all information will be provided in court”. The company also said that “it does not condone slavery-like work conditions” and that “according to a court decision, all assets were returned/released”. Read the full statement here.

In addition to the abovementioned involvement of Ourominas and HStern in the purchase of illegal gold, the investigations conducted as part of the Warari Koxi operation also points to another DTVM: Dillon, which declared a net profit of R$ 692 thousand in the 2^nd half of 2020. The company used Naza Jóias store, in Boa Vista, as a “branch” to buy gold extracted from TI Yanomami. 

“Dillon, directly and indirectly, financed illegal mining activities in the State of Roraima”, said the Federal Police in one of the investigations. Documents found at the company’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro showed that such DTVM made bank transfers to representatives of Naza Joias and Du Gold, stores in Boa Vista identified as buyers of Yanomami gold. 

Eduardo Freire da Silva Filho, a partner at Du Gold, was indicted for crimes against the environment following the Xawara operation. Chairman and majority shareholder of Dillon, Luis Claudio Lins Fabbriani is a defendant in a lawsuit for money laundering and concealment of assets and the imposition of slavery-lie work conditions in the Coogal case, in Amapá. 

Maria Nazaré, from Naza Joias, and Eduardo Freire, from Du Gold, informed through their lawyers that they will not make a statement on this issue. Francisco Picorelli, Compliance Director at Dillon, informed by phone that the case was being analyzed by the company’s partners. So far, there has been no response to Repórter Brasil‘s questions. 

Invoices and traces of the illegal scheme

Investigations into a single smuggler helped the Federal police obtain some of what little evidence has been produced as a result of these operations. These are invoices found at the home of Rafael Vieira, an employee of Itaituba Metais, corresponding to the sale of TI Yanomami gold to three DTVMs: R$ 44,000 (356g) to Carol DTVM, based in São Paulo, R$ 20,000 (170g) to Coluna DTVM, headquartered in Rio de Janeiro and R$ 8,800 (79g) to D’Gold, one of Dirceu Sobrinho’s business arms.

Unlike in previous cases, in which purchasing stations were registered in the name of third parties, in this case the station is registered in the name of Dirceu Sobrinho and his daughter, Sarah Almeida Frederico. 

This episode illustrates well what prosecutors and experts criticize about the weakness of the law – which protects buyers – and the difficulty in producing evidence. Only the employees of Itaituba Metais, Rafael Vieira and the owner Leandro de Sousa Rodrigues (sellers), were indicted by the Public Prosecutors’ Office as a result of the Tori operation, for misappropriation of assets belonging to the Federal Government. The DTVMs (buyers) were left alone.

Coluna DTVM told Repórter Brasil that it “is unaware of the allegations of purchase of gold from indigenous reserves” and that it has not been summoned by the Federal Police or by the Public Prosecutors’ Office. Read the full statement here. Carol DTVM did not respond to the reporter’s questions.

Dirceu Sobrinho did not answer questions about the invoices relating to the purchase of gold from Itaituba Metais either. Through his lawyer, Leandro de Sousa Rodrigues, the founder of the company, informed that he would not make a statement. Rafael Vieira’s defense could not be reached.

The Central Bank told the reporters it would not issue a comment on this issue. 

The ANM press office claimed that it could not answer, as it was not aware of cases involving the miners used to “launder” illegal gold.

“There is a very strong lobby, because these businessmen, linked to Anoro [the National Gold Association], are behind the laws that govern the sector. They designed the system, which exempt them from criminal responsibility”, says prosecutor Tarso, noting that the problem is that the law exempts buyers – and there are many of them.

If you’ve come this far and found that there are too many parties involved in the scheme, you’re right. According to specialists, the structure of illegal mining at TI Yanomami is based on a series of nuclei, with different people getting rich in each one of them. Regarding the universe of small middlemen companies, many of the names investigated by the Federal Police or indicted by the Prosecutors’ Office are not mentioned here. Our focus was on larger companies, the DTVMs and their respective intermediaries. 

Precisely because of the complexity of the logistics, as well as the profusion of actors involved in the scheme, the Federal Public Prosecutor in Roraima, Alisson Marugal, believes that only “a real war operation could end illegal mining in indigenous lands”. 

*In collaboration with Piero Locatelli

Yanomami Blood Gold Teams

Amazônia Real: Kátia Brasil (executive editor); Eduardo Nunomura (special editor); Alberto Cesar Araujo (photography editor), Elaíze Farias (content editor); Maria Fernanda Ribeiro, Clara Britto and Alicia Lobato (reporters); Bruno Kelly (flight photographer) and Paulo Dessana (photographer); Lívia Lemos (social media); Maria Cecília Costa (executive assistant); Giovanny Vera (maps); César Nogueira (editing); Nelson Mota (developer); and Ana Cecilia Maranhão Godoy (translator).

Repórter Brasil: Ana Magalhães (journalism coordinator); Mariana Della Barba (editor); Mayra Sartorato (social media editor); Piero Locatelli and Guilherme Henrique (reporters); Joyce Cardoso (intern).

O post HStern, Ourominas and D’Gold: major buyers of illegal gold from TI Yanomami apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

In 2021, the spiral of violence that marks illegal mining activities in the Yanomami Indigenous Land (TIY) reached new highs. On May 10, the Palimiu village, on the banks of the Uraricoera River, was attacked by gunfire. The next day, six federal police officers were sent to the village, but were welcomed with bullets by the criminals. Even with the presence of the Army and Federal Police at the TIY, there were at least 11 new attacks on different villages. Suspicions fall on miners linked to one of the largest criminal organizations in the country, the PCC (First Command of the Capital), which has been getting closer to illegal miners in the State at least since 2018. 

Phone tapping carried out during the Federal Police’s Operation Érebo, in 2018, captured dialogues by a member of the PCC who lives in Iracema, in the interior of the state of Roraima, that described the expansion of the criminal organization to the mining areas, where there is a massive presence of ex -convicts and fugitives from justice. 

Although investigators do not know precisely the role that members of the PCC play in the structure of illegal mining and cannot say for sure whether they only provide protection or act in the illegal extraction of the metal itself, experts have no doubts that the lack of regulation of the gold market in the country encourages the laundering of money – which attracts organized crime.

“Gold is the best way to launder money today”, says Federal Prosecutor Paulo de Tarso Moreira Oliveira, from the Itaituba region, in Pará. “The fact that the PCC is operating in mines is a natural process. Not just the PCC, but any organization that deals with criminal money. Anyone who is illegally enriched and wants to justify an increase in wealth, can just go to the gold sector”, says the prosecutor, one of the leading investigators of illegal gold mining. 

“Mining sites are an environment conducive to criminality”, agrees police chief Adolpho Albuquerque, from the Federal Police’s Organized Crime Repression Office in Roraima, in an interview with Amazônia Real.

In the assessment of Larissa Rodrigues, project manager at Instituto Escolhas, an entity that advocates the implementation of gold tracing practices in the country, mining has become attractive to criminals. “Since you have a weak control and trading system, you can launder money with gold. Not because you actually want to sell gold, but because it’s so loosely controlled and has so much value that you can launder money from drugs, arms trafficking, whatever, using gold.” 

Mining logistics facilitates the transportation of drugs

The logistics of mining activities in the Yanomami Indigenous Land, which depends on planes and helicopters to transport supplies, miners and gold, is another factor that generates a natural proximity to drug trafficking. 

“Since they have specialized workforce [pilots], they end up agreeing to do anything. The opportunity arises to transport drugs, to transport miners… whatever the opportunity in these areas of crime, whether environmental or drug trafficking, they will not refuse it”, analyzes Police Chief Albuquerque.

A survey carried out by Amazônia Real and Repórter Brasil covering the 31 airplanes that have been flying over mining sites at the TIY over the last decade shows that at least two pilots suspected of providing logistical support to the mines had been caught transporting cocaine – many years before the PCC expanded and consolidated its presence in Roraima.

A target of the Xawara operation in 2012, pilot José Donizete do Amaral flew several times to and from the illegal mines in TI Yanomami. Some of those flights were connected to Pedro Emiliano Garcia, convicted of genocide due to the Haximu massacre that killed 16 indigenous people in 1993.

Read more about the Haximu massacre

According to the investigations conducted by the Federal Police, on his flights to and from the territory, José Donizete transported supplies such as food, weapons, ammunition and mercury to illegal mines. But his direct connection to a drug gang would only be revealed years later. In 2017, he piloted the single-engine Cessna 206 prefix PT-JPW loaded with 525 kilograms of cocaine that crashed into the Branco River, east of Yanomami territory. He died in the accident and only 97 kilos of the drug were found by the police – the other part was rescued by cronies who ended up in prison. 

Another aircraft pilot connected to illegal mining was also caught transporting drugs. Amarildo Oliveira Berigó, identified by the Federal Police as Donizete’s partner, and also a target of the Xawara operation for operating illegal flights to and from IT Yanomami. In 1999, he was arrested in the act by the Federal Police during the seizure of 372 kilos of cocaine on a farm in Cocalinho, Mato Grosso. According to the Federal Police, the site belonged to the network of mega-trafficker Leonardo Dias Mendonça, known as the “trafficking baron”. Berigó could not be reached to comment.

Connections with Venezuela

Located in the far north of the country, the state of Roraima and neighboring Amazonas are in a strategic region for international drug trafficking and arms smuggling. In the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the border with Venezuela has always been dominated by illegal mining – part of the Yanomami blood gold ends up being sold in the neighboring country. It is across this same border that the sale of drugs and weapons also takes place.

Read more about the companies that buy gold mined at TIY [DTVMs]

In 2008, Brazilian authorities pointed out that Plan Colombia (an anti-drug policy sponsored by the United States beginning in 1999) increased the amount of cocaine that entered Brazil through the Amazon region.

A telegram leaked through the Wikileaks platform shows that that year a US mission sent to Roraima and Amazonas met with prosecutors and police officers and was on the border with Venezuela. In addition to detecting an increase in drug trafficking in the region, mainly through rivers, they pointed out that there was little police force and limited resources to face significant regional challenges, such as drug trafficking. 

The investigators also stated that state and federal authorities in Roraima admitted the existence, but underestimated the exploitation of slave and child labor, as well as the sexual trafficking of women and girls to illegal mining areas.

Even though the increase in drug trafficking on the border, a region that was already dominated by illegal mining, was known for more than ten years, it was only in 2020 that the Federal Police began to investigate “strong suspicions” that the PCC had articulated an alliance with Tren de Aragua, one of the largest criminal groups in Venezuela, involved in kidnappings, homicides, vehicle theft and drug, weapons and human trafficking. 

The allegation of connection between the PCC and the Aragua Train was the result of operation Triumphus, which identified in Roraima the recruitment by the PCC of Venezuelan immigrants already involved in crimes. The investigation, to which Amazônia Real had access, found that at least 740 Venezuelans have joined the ranks of the PCC in the state in the first half of 2020. 

“We have reports of weapons that come through the international route, enter through Venezuela or Guyana. Usually, they are brought in by these people, these faction members, or someone or other who has a debt, who owes something to the faction, then they manage to take these weapons over there”, explains Chief Albuquerque, from the Federal Police, making a connection between the inflow of weapons into the mines and the actions of members of criminal groups. 

PCC in Roraima

The PCC came into existence in the 2000s and developed within the prisons of São Paulo; in Roraima it was no different. The presence of the criminal organization had already been detected in the state in 2014 and, that year, it underwent an abrupt growth: over a few months it went from 50 to 1.5 thousand members.

In 2016 and 2017, the Monte Cristo Agricultural Penitentiary, in Boa Vista, was the scene of two massacres that left 43 inmates dead, most of them from the rival group, Comando Vermelho. A series of attacks in four cities in the state in a night of terror in July 2018 is also attributed to PCC.

In those first years of the PCC’s activities in Roraima, a not-so-silent war was waged on the outskirts of Boa Vista. For the first time in history, the dispute for control of drug trafficking led a northern state to reach the top ranking in homicides, according to the survey published in the Brazilian Public Safety Yearbook. The survey found that Roraima ended 2018 with 348 intentional lethal violent crimes, or 66.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, more than double the national average of 27.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. 

In 2018, federal intervention was decreed in the Roraima prison system, mainly to resume the operation of the Monte Cristo Agricultural Penitentiary, controlled by the PCC. A Task Force for Combating Organized Crime (Ficco) was also formed in the state, composed of the Federal, Civil and Military police and the Department of Justice and Citizenship, responsible for the prison system. But, by then, the faction had ramifications of its business far beyond the prison bars. And one of its main targets was precisely illegal mining. 

PCC presence at TIY

This is not the first time that vice chairman of the Yanomami Hutukara Association, Dário Kopenawa Yanomami, has received reports from leaders about the presence of people associated to drug trafficking at TI Yanomami. “They are taking drugs, cocaine, to the indigenous land. We are worried, they are going to distribute it to the Yanomami, we were talking about this to the previous [Army] generals. The Army itself has seen it, they have seized cocaine, marijuana. They have these reports”, he says.

The Yanomami people informed the Federal Police of the threats and attacks, which have intensified in the Korekorema region since the beginning of this year. But even before these first episodes, Dário recalls that the Yanomami reported that miners have died in conflict with criminals in the region of Tatuzão. 

“There are many miners dying over there, robbing one another, killing one another, so there is a faction, it’s the PCC. The Federal Public Prosecutors’ Office, the Federal Police are aware of this”, explains Dário Kopenawa. “We reported: ‘Look, many people are entering [the indigenous land], causing violence, and other rich miners are hiring factions at the head of the Uraricoera. Venezuelan miners are working [in the TI], Brazilians are working in Venezuela too, this exchange of miners exists, but there is no supervision over national law, like the Army. They don’t watch, they don’t monitor or inspect the borders between Brazil and Venezuela.” 

PCC knew how to equip itself and occupy the vacuum left by the authorities, which sometimes are lenient with illegal mining and other times encourage the invasion of indigenous lands. “The PCC is strong there, with heavy weapons and everything”, said a police source heard by the reporter on the presence of faction members at illegal mining sites  in the Yanomami Indigenous Land (TIY). “There is an investigation that includes photos of ex-convicts and fugitives with heavy weapons in there.”

In March of this year, the Federal Police deactivated a mine in the Waikás region, close to the Venezuelan border. It was a place known as ‘Fofoca do Cavalo’, where the presence of 2,000 miners was estimated. The site infrastructure impressed the police. Miners had access to a dental office, restaurant, wi-fi internet service and a helicopter. “Of the (mining) sites that we went to, which were at least 10, this was one of the most striking. It really had the infrastructure of a small town, they even held carnival parades with customized shirts and pamphlets”, said Chief Albuquerque.

In the opinion of miner José Altino Machado, who since the 1970s has led mining operations in Yanomami territory, the presence of drug traffickers is a fact. “Exactly, not full command, of course. But the government is theirs since everything is illegal. Their [drug trafficking] presence is hidden, everything is illegal. So, the repression that miners, who are not criminals, those who invest, suffer is the same repression applied to traffickers, so they take advantage of the fact that illegality is a common denominator”.

The arrival of the National Force

After the shooting in the Palimiu village on May 10, the attacks continued. Between May 12 and June 4, the Army went into operation, together with the Federal Police, deactivating seven illegal mining sites in the region. A day later, on June 5, armed men in four boats invaded the Maikohipi community and dropped tear gas. On June 8, indigenous people from the Walomapi community who had gone hunting were attacked, and on June 10  the Maikohipi community was attacked again, one dog was shot dead and village people were verbally attacked. 

The attacks continued. On the June 13, a group of miners fired shots at the Palimiu village. On June 16, a new shooting attack took place in the Korekorema village and on June 17, children and young people fishing in the Uraricoera River near the Tipolei village were hit by a miners’ boat.

All these attacks were reported by the Hutukara Yanomami Association and by the Yanomami and Ye’kuana District Health Council (Condisi-Y) to the Federal Prosecutors’ Office, to the Federal Police, to Funai and to the Army’s 1^st Jungle Infantry Brigade in Roraima.

On June 10, the federal government authorized the use of the National Public Security Force in “activities and services essential to the preservation of public order” for 90 days at the Yanomami Indigenous Land”. 

The belated measure was announced amid an upsurge of violence and three weeks after the Federal Supreme Court (STF) ordered the government to adopt urgent measures to protect the Yanomami people. 

On June 16, the reporter asked the Ministry of Justice to comment on the actions of agents of the National Force in the indigenous territory but received no response. 

*In collaboration with Kátia Brasil

Yanomami Blood Gold Teams

Amazônia Real: Kátia Brasil (executive editor); Eduardo Nunomura (special editor); Alberto Cesar Araujo (photography editor), Elaíze Farias (content editor); Maria Fernanda Ribeiro, Clara Britto and Alicia Lobato (reporters); Bruno Kelly (flight photographer) and Paulo Dessana (photographer); Lívia Lemos (social media); Maria Cecília Costa (executive assistant); Giovanny Vera (maps); César Nogueira (editing); Nelson Mota (developer); and Ana Cecilia Maranhão Godoy (translator).

Repórter Brasil: Ana Magalhães (journalism coordinator); Mariana Della Barba (editor); Mayra Sartorato (social media editor); Piero Locatelli and Guilherme Henrique (reporters); Joyce Cardoso (intern).

O post PCC approaches miners to launder money apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Romero Jucá (MDB) has been keeping a low profile. He still lives in Brasilia but has been leading a discreet life since he was not re-elected to the Senate in 2018. Since then, he has rarely responded to the press. Staying out of the spotlight is understandable. In recent years, Jucá’s name has been implicated in corruption cases, although he has always dodged them. But the past of this well-known character in Brazilian politics is umbilically linked to the mining activity in Roraima. So much so that, in 2016, Dário Kopenawa Yanomami, vice chairman of HAY (the Hutukara Yanomami Association) and the son of leader Davi Kopenawa, called him “the worst enemy of the indigenous peoples of Brazil”.

Between May 1986 and September 1988, during the José Sarney administration, Romero Jucá was appointed chairman of the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (Funai). The time when the agency was headed by Jucá was disastrous for the Yanomami people. Still, he received an  award from the government. From 1988 to 1990, Jucá was appointed by Sarney, his political godfather and a MDB party chieftain, to be the first governor of the territory of Roraima, which would later become the State of Roraima. 

In the context of project Calha Norte – created in 1985 under the pretext of populating the borders with Colombia, Peru and Venezuela, and bringing infrastructure to the region’s villages -, the Sarney administration saw mining on Yanomami land as the perfect solution to an imminent social issue. A year earlier, the Serra Pelada mine, in Pará, had showed signs of manual mining exhaustion, which meant that around 80,000 miners would be left with nothing to do. The heavy machinery would be called into action. With the blessings of the head of the Military Household Rubens Bayma Denys and of Jucá, at Funai, a new mining front could absorb this contingent of individuals thirsting for gold, diamonds and other mineral wealth.

Read Zé Altino reveals military mining interests

In 1986, Jucá allowed illegal mining in Roraima to advance by expanding an old airstrip in the region of Paapiu and Couto de Magalhães, on the border between Brazil and Venezuela. The work of the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) facilitated the entry of invaders, as no military base was built at the site. The following year, Jucá expelled NGOs and religious missions and ordered the removal of health teams from TI Yanomami, in the midst of a pandemic of malaria and the flu. And in August 1988, at the end of his term as chairman of Funai, he even proposed a 75% reduction in the size of TI Yanomami.

The study “(De)territorialization and Social Conflicts in the Struggle for Space in Roraima”, by France Rodrigues, a professor at the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR), states that “amidst allegations of conflicts between indigenous peoples and miners, Romero Jucá presented José Sarney’s “Project Meridiano 62″, which proposed the creation of mining reserves in areas with a higher concentration of mining operations, allowing the activity for two years. Big mining companies, traders, businessmen and individual miners hailed Governor Romero Jucá as the ‘savior of the miners’”. 

The gold capital

“The actual number of clandestine airstrips is incalculable, but, unofficially, there are 80. But if FAB and the DAC [Department of Civil Aviation] wanted to [prevent these activities], they would not be built, nor would the planes leave without flight plans”, said the then federal congressman Plínio de Arruda Sampaio (PT-SP), on June 28, 1989 in an article by Agência Estado. This statement remains true to this day, 32 years later. In that same article, there is information that the Boa Vista airport, which did not have a radar system, was the second busiest airport in Brazil at the time, with 300 daily landings and departures. An estimated “85% of a gold production that amounted to three kilos a day” left Roraima.

Read how airplanes are key pieces of illegal mining operations

In 1991, Italian author Luigi Eusebi, in his book “A barriga morreu” (Edições Loyola), which deals with the genocide of the Yanomami people, stated that Jucá was known as “the man with 35 mines”. Thus, it was no surprise that in March 1996, after being elected senator from Roraima as a representative of the PFL party, Jucá submitted Bill of Law 1,610, which authorized mining on indigenous lands. In December 2014, he asked for the withdrawal of the bill, which was still under discussion in the Congress, claiming, on the floor of the Senate, that the mining issue was “a price I no longer want to bear”.

This was his reaction after being identified by the National Truth Commission, also in December 2014, as the person responsible for allowing the invasion of TI Yanomami by 40,000 miners, when he was in charge of Funai. The final report estimated that at least 8,350 Yanomami died, either as a result of the direct action of government agents or due to omission.

Family Interests

Romero Jucá is from Pernambuco, where he received a degree in economics and began his political career. He occupied a municipal office in Recife in 1984, four years before being assigned to be governor of the then territory of Roraima. The relocation was good for the family net worth. The Jucá family became owner of the largest communication conglomerate in the state of Roraima.

Today, the group’s companies are registered in the name of the ex-senator’s wife, Rosilene de Brito Pereira Jucá, and their children. TV Imperial, an affiliate of Rede Record, is partly owned by Jucá’s stepson, André Felipe de Brito Pereira Costa. Buritis Comunicações, an affiliate of TV Bandeirantes, is registered in the name of Rosilene and her son Rodrigo Menezes de Holanda Jucá, who in turn has other companies registered in his name. One of them is the advertising agency Uyrapuru Comunicações, in which Rodrigo Jucá appears as a partner at Societat Participações, the only company in the group located in São Paulo. Societat, which provides information services, is also co-owned by daughter Marina de Holanda Menezes Jucá Marques. Marina and Jucá’s wife Rosilene also co-own Rádio Equatorial and Editora Online, responsible for the Roraima em Tempo website. 

Marina, in particular, knows the world of mining in Roraima well. She owns Boa Vista Mineração. On the website of the National Mining Agency, the reporters located a request for authorization filed by the company owned by Jucá’s daughter to mine gold in Amajari, at Serra do Tepequém, near TI Yanomami. But in 2015, Boa Vista Mineração filed a request to discontinue activities at that site.

In 2017, in an interview to website Poder360, the politician explained that his refusal to legalize mining on indigenous lands had nothing to do with the fact that his daughter Marina, Maria Teresa Surita’s stepdaughter, owned a mining company. Teresa Surita, who was five times elected mayor of the city of Boa Vista, with approval rates above 75%, was once married to Romero Jucá, a former senator and former governor of Roraima. In the capital city of Roraima, her first election is attributed to Jucá, in 1992, although he himself was defeated at the polls two years earlier while running for governor of the newly created state of Roraima.

Romero Jucá was contacted by the reporters, both directly and through his press office, on three occasions, but declined to be interviewed.

Local politics

Federal Police Chief Adolpho Albuquerque, from the Federal Police’s Organized Crime Repression Precinct, says that one of the main challenges for combating illegal mining in Roraima is what he classified as “massive backing from politicians and authorities, who support people who work in this activity”. 

Here in Roraima, there is a particularity that is the issue of local culture. The state’s foundations are deeply rooted on mining activities, people came here to seek a new life through gold mining especially. So culturally there is a social acceptance of this activity. There’s this motto that they use: ‘Miners are not criminals’, Adolpho Albuquerque, Federal Police Chief

More than that, mining yields votes. Supported by the bolsonarist movement,  Antonio Oliverio Garcia, known as Denarium, was elected governor of Roraima in 2018 with 136,612 votes. Born in Anápolis, in Goiás, and living in Roraima since the 1990s, he was elected as a representative of the PSL party and shared the same inflamed anti-immigration and pro-mining discourse as Jair Bolsonaro,.

Denarium, his nickname, comes from “denarius”, the standard silver coin during the Roman Empire. He took over the government even before his inauguration, when he was appointed federal intervenor via a decree by then-president Michel Temer (MDB). Roraima faced a financial and political collapse as state officials staged strikes and protests against months of wage arrears. It was the end of the administration of Suely Campos, wife of Neudo Campos, former governor identified as the leader of the ‘locust scandal’ and prevented from running for office in 2016 due to the “Clean Record Law”.

Up to that point, Denarium was seen as an agribusiness (soy and cattle) entrepreneur and a former director of Banco Bamerindus – whose job had brought him to Roraima – but unknown to local politicians, even though his opponents accused him of loan sharking, which he always denied. Once in power, the governor proved to be a faithful ally to illegal miners, following in the footsteps of President Bolsonaro. 

At the end of last year, when the state recorded 700 deaths by Covid-19, Denarium was concerned about submitting to the Legislative Assembly of Roraima Bill of Law 201/2020, known as the “Mining Bill” (stayed since February by the Federal Supreme Court), which introduced flexibility in the process of environmental licensing of mining activities. The bill would open the state’s lands to mining, also allowing the use of machinery and mercury, which is a substance that is highly toxic to humans, plants and animals.

Incidentally, mercury was included in the Bill of Law thanks to an amendment by state congressman Eder Lourinho (PTC). Another political newcomer, he was elected in 2018 with 2,581 votes after campaigning alongside Denarium himself and Airton Cascavel, recently identified as the a direct assistant to former minister of health Eduardo Pazuello. From the military to Romero Jucá, from Denarium to Bolsonaro, in Roraima all that glitters is, indeed, gold, but much of it is tarnished by Yanomami blood.

*In collaboration with Clara Britto and Kátia Brasil

Yanomami Blood Gold Teams

Amazônia Real: Kátia Brasil (executive editor); Eduardo Nunomura (special editor); Alberto Cesar Araujo (photography editor), Elaíze Farias (content editor); Maria Fernanda Ribeiro, Clara Britto and Alicia Lobato (reporters); Bruno Kelly (flight photographer) and Paulo Dessana (photographer); Lívia Lemos (social media); Maria Cecília Costa (executive assistant); Giovanny Vera (maps); César Nogueira (editing); Nelson Mota (developer); and Ana Cecilia Maranhão Godoy (translator).

Repórter Brasil: Ana Magalhães (journalism coordinator); Mariana Della Barba (editor); Mayra Sartorato (social media editor); Piero Locatelli and Guilherme Henrique (reporters); Joyce Cardoso (intern).

O post Romero Jucá, the ‘worst enemy’ of the Yanomami people apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Aviator and miner José Altino Machado, now 79 years old, was known in the country as the person responsible for the three largest invasions by miners in the regions of Xitei and Surucucu at the Yanomami Indigenous Land in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, in Roraima. With more than half a decade of experience in cassiterite (tin) mining, in 1978 he founded União Sindical dos Garimpeiros da Amazônia Legal (Usagal). At one time, he headed more than 350,000 men in several open mines in the Amazon region. 

Born in Governador Valadares, Zé Altino, as he is known, had a fleet of more than 410 planes and to this day operates mines on the Tapajós River, in Pará. Soft-spoken and opinionated, he describes in this exclusive interview to Amazônia Real how the Army encouraged mining during the Military Dictatorship. He was also supported in Roraima by politicians such as former president of the Republic José Sarney and former senator Romero Jucá, both affiliated to MDB.

The miner is close to the vice-president of the Republic, General Hamilton Mourão, the chairman of the National Council for the Legal Amazon. But he disagrees with President Jair Bolsonaro’s (no party) Bill, since, in his opinion, it will only benefit multinational companies. “Bolsonaro’s bill will cause a mess. First of all, it makes no reference to mining in indigenous areas. It mentions large-scale mining companies, multinational companies. This is not mining”, he says in the interview below. 

Regarding the current problem of illegal activity on indigenous lands, with escalating violence, involvement with the criminal faction PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) and increased environmental destruction, Zé Altino does not see any easy solutions. “You can even remove [the miners], but in 6 or 7 months everyone will be back”. 

The mineral deposits in Roraima were discovered between 1975 and 1977, during the Military Dictatorship, by Project Radam (Radar da Amazônia), of the Ministry of Mines and Energy. Is that why you headed to Roraima?

José Altino Machado – In the 1960s I was a city councilman in Governador Valadares (MG), where I was born, and where I was also the largest milk producer in Brazil at the time. In the early 1970s, I was also the largest corn producer in eastern Minas Gerais. In 1967, I wandered through the mines of Jari (AP). In October 1977, I lost a two-year-old daughter, who drowned in a pool accident at home. Then I embraced the Amazon and its people!

What was it like during the first gold rush?

Zé Altino – Between 1977 and 78. We got there [at the Yanomami Indigenous Land]. There were a lot of people [miners], more than 8 thousand around that Surucucu airstrip, that we opened up. The mineral deposits were appraised at something like 6 or 7 billion dollars. Others, deep into the border, were valued at 10 billion. Up there [in Surucucu] there were no indigenous people. They were at the top of the [Parima] mountain range. With the arrival of the miners, once in a while, they would come down, so at the time we were an attraction, [they came to us to] get supplies. Then Governor Ramos Pereira [Army Colonel Fernando Ramos Pereira] called us up and said: ‘Look, the mining is a bit messy’. The governor told us to get out of the region so that it could get organized. We built the airstrip and we all stayed there. [Miners] flew from Rondônia. We worked in an organized way. After the opening of the mines at the Yanomami Land, the Army installed a post in Surucucu. This was all so they could use the miners’ airstrip. Then the government had Companhia Vale do Rio Doce set up operations over there.

Were the miners removed from the indigenous land by the Federal Police?

Zé Altino – Governor Ramos Pereira started the state intervention. When he closed the mine, he opened a health care facility and a Funai post over there, which served to attract the indigenous people of Surucucu. This is one of the crimes that happen in this country, which is to take indigenous rights, which already exist, and throw it over a deposit as rich as that one.

How did Vale do Rio Doce set up its operations at the Yanomami Indigenous Land?

Zé Altino – It was during the administration of General João Figueiredo (1979-1985). On August 24, 1984, Vale submitted a report returning the area’s private rights and saying that in Roraima there was nothing economically viable that could be explored. On August 26, the son of the chairman [Eliezer Batista] of Vale do Rio Doce, Eike Batista, comes into the scene. That was a problem that got us very upset [with the military]. Then I said: ‘No, that area over there, that’s ours. We built the airstrip and discovered the mineral deposit’ and that was that. Now, to take it [the mineral deposit] and to say that there is nothing in the area, when it was one of the richest in the world? And who is the big invader? Me? Vale, Funai and the Army spent nothing and got hold of everything [that belonged to the miners], and we are the big invaders? That’s Brazil for you!

‘Vale, Funai and the Army spent nothing and got hold of everything [that belonged to the miners in the 1980s], and we are the big invaders? That’s Brazil for you!’

You participated in the movement against the so-called “internationalization” of Roraima, supported by the Rural Democratic Union (UDR). Around 1985, during the José Sarney administration, the second gold rush took place at the Yanomami Land. What was that like?

Zé Altino – We got to Surucucu via the Uatatas or Parima river, 3 km away from the border [with Venezuela]. At the entryway [to the Yanomami territory] there were only 70 men. In my opinion, all that we were doing was to return to our own workspace. Then we got to 620 [people].

At that time there was very strong repercussion and the Organization of American States (OAS) actually questioned the Brazilian authorities about the need to create a Yanomami Park. You were arrested in the act by the Federal Police for the invasion of the territory.

Zé Altino – Even in prison, I never gave up the plans to explore the mine in Surucucu. In the prison’s chapel, where I was being held, we started the meetings to create the Association of Sparklers and Miners of the Federal Territory of Roraima, which was the seed for the creation of Usagal [União Sindical dos Garimpeiros da Amazônia Legal].

Did you return a third time to mining at Surucucu?

Zé Altino – Yes. On February 16, 1989,  Sarney enacted decrees No. 97,512 and No.97,530, which reduced the total area of the Yanomami territory to 2.4 million hectares, comprising 19 noncontiguous areas or “islands”. The following year, he created two mining reserves: the Roraima National Forest and the Uraricoera and Catrimani-Couto Magalhães. Mining activities took off! We reached 40,000 [people] entering and exiting the mining area; there was a lot of turnover. The number of miners then leveled at 26 thousand men. We had 410 planes [at the airport hangar] and 1,000 men assigned to this service in Boa Vista, in addition to 154 airstrips in different places. We also had ferries on the rivers and manual mining off the tracks.

But Sarney left the government and then president Fernando Collor de Mello overturned the decrees. The Federal Constitution of 1988 also prohibits the extraction of minerals on indigenous lands. What do you have to say about this ban?

Zé Altino – Trading in gold is not illegal. The 1988 Constitution created a new taxation system for gold in its natural or industrialized state: ‘commodity gold’. Roraima is the only place in the world where cassiterite is associated with gold. The gold that comes out with the cassiterite pays for the entire mining operation; it comes practically for free. At that time, cassiterite with tin was worth 1,600 dollars.

‘Why should I regret [mining at indigenous lands]? If this is a nightmare for some, it is a lifeline for may’

But president Collor banned mining operations and initiated the demarcation of the indigenous lands, what was that like?

José Altino Machado- On March 18 [1990], Collor wore a general’s uniform and went to Roraima. He called the press from around the world to say that he was going to protect the indigenous people and created the law that closed the mines, disregarding previous rights. That’s what brought about this mess. This caused an unprecedented confusion because our activity, it does not depend on the authority  of the State to be pursued. It never depended on big capital; it doesn’t require a degree. It practically democratizes the expansion of the activity. The richest men I know from the mines don’t even have a bank account. We don’t have to wait for harvesting time, planting time, we take the material and it’s ready. This is an activity that reigns supreme over any determination that may be under conflict. That’s why Roraima lives in a state of misery.

Operations to remove miners continued throughout the 1990s. Between June and July 1993, a series of conflicts with miners took place in the Haximu village – at the upper Orinoco region, in Venezuela. In the aftermath of the attacks, miners shot and killed 16 Yanomami. This was the first case in Brazil to be tried as a genocide crime. Five miners were convicted. What is your version of these events that took place 28 years ago?

Zé Altino – I learned [about the conflicts]. They [the miners] came to me, I told them: ‘don’t fight back, don’t look [for trouble], don’t go, don’t seek retaliation!’. But they went ahead and armed themselves: they went there. When the indigenous people went back, there was a fight. This happened on the Venezuelan side. I moved away [from the Yanomami Indigenous Land], because I don’t want to get involved with certain issues, but the behavior of one, two, three, four men had this much influence.

Do you regret having mined in indigenous areas, due to the socio-environmental damages caused to the forest and conflicts that led to deaths?

Zé Altino – Why should I regret that? My defense and my discourse may not sound so pretty and may not be as utopic as that of other political or religious groups, but they are true. If this is a nightmare for some, it is a lifeline for may. Furthermore, these Yanomami who are now so helpless, in the not-so-distant past, they had an average life expectancy of 32, 34 years. It is irresponsible to defend any model that would leave them as they were. In fact, it was an ‘official and irresponsible abandonment’. It would always be easy to take care of any society like that. In Brazil, everything is done and judged ‘by ear’, never based on knowledge and/or culture.

You said that you left the Yanomami Indigenous Land, but you did not leave the mining business, so much so that you are now in Tapajós…

Zé Altino – I have no business and no position of command [in mining operations]. Still, there are areas preserved and respected as being mine, since the 1980s. They are left alone over there [in the Yanomami land]. I’m waiting for the legalization of mining at indigenous lands. I’m under the impression that if I go there, I will harm my fellows. 

Do you mean Bill of Law (PL) 191/2020, by president Jair Bolsonaro, which regulates mining at indigenous lands?

Zé Altino – Bolsonaro’s bill will cause a mess. First of all, it makes no reference to mining in indigenous areas. It mentions large-scale mining companies, multinational companies. This is not mining. The miners have been there [in the Yanomami land] for four decades with them as partners and accomplices in illegality. Munduruku is 60 years old and everyone is working together. Kayapó is 35 years old, everyone together. All these indigenous communities have been together with the so-called civilized communities, for years and years. Then you go in and enact an ill-fated law, because society has already organized itself due to the emptiness and omission of the governments and administrations of the world, and this never crosses the minds of congressmen in São Paulo, in Paraná, in Rio de Janeiro, who think that that’s how it’s supposed to be. 

‘It’s been 28 years [since the Haximu massacre] and mining never ceased to exist. What happened is that work got modernized’

So, you are not close to Bolsonaro, but you are close to the vice president of the Republic, General Hamilton Mourão, the chairman of the National Council for the Legal Amazon.  

Zé Altino – I met General Mourão as a colonel heading the second section of the CMA [Military Command of the Amazon], in Manaus. So, the Amazon and [Amazon] affairs have a very special place in their [the military] hearts and minds. They will never push indigenous people away as other rulers do and have done, because they know [the indigenous people], it is difficult for them, [even for] Mourão himself. The Council has a limited role, it is limited to organizing proposals, and nothing goes forward because of “human vanities”.  

In the current political scenario, the federal government has been organizing a new removal of miners from the Yanomami Land, where several conflicts have taken place.

Zé Altino – It’s been 28 years [since the Haximu massacre] and mining never ceased to exist. What happened is that work got modernized. In the past, we used more planes. With that [there was] the need to build airstrips. When we arrived, we built 150 [airstrips] in two months. At that time, I only used airplanes and very few helicopters. Now, Roraima has 40 helicopters; this made the activity much easier. You can even remove [the miners], but in 6 or 7 months everyone will be back.

Yanomami Blood Gold Teams

Amazônia Real: Kátia Brasil (executive editor); Eduardo Nunomura (special editor); Alberto Cesar Araujo (photography editor), Elaíze Farias (content editor); Maria Fernanda Ribeiro, Elisa de Oliveira and Alicia Lobato (reporters); Bruno Kelly (flight photographer) and Paulo Dessana (photographer); Lívia Lemos (social media); Maria Cecília Costa (executive assistant); Giovanny Vera (maps); César Nogueira (editing); Nelson Mota (developer) and Ana Cecilia Maranhão Godoy (translator).

Repórter Brasil: Ana Magalhães (journalism coordinator); Mariana Della Barba (editor); Mayra Sartorato (social media editor); Piero Locatelli and Guilherme Henrique (reporters); Joyce Cardoso (intern).

O post ‘Bolsonaro’s mining bill will turn into a mess’, says the living memory of mining in Brazil apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Governments around the world are demanding more corporate governance in line with obligations and commitments to protect and promote human rights in all their activities and operations. It is the so-called mandatory human rights due diligence, provided for in legislation of countries such as Germany, France and the United States, which require companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and be accountable for damages they cause or to which they contribute.

It is still not clear how Brazil fits into this scenario. As a major exporter and producer of commodities, can the country benefit from these foreign laws to demand greater respect for human rights from transnational companies in activities and operations that take place in Brazilian territory? Does Brazil also need more legal frameworks to combat common problems in its supply chains?

The event “Supply Chain Laws: Advancing Towards Due Diligence?” will discuss these and other issues related to due diligence and transparency in supply chains. It will be held on August 17, 24 and 31, always from 9 am to 11 am, and will be broadcast on YouTube and Zoom.

The seminar aims to engage society with the topic in Brazil. It is organized by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center (BHRRC), Conectas Human Rights, Christliche Initiative Romero (CIR), and Repórter Brasil, with support from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It will analyse the current international scenario of international laws on due diligence and discuss how Brazilian society can benefit from them.

Link to the live stream on YouTube

The first day of the event (August 17) will focus on international legislation and the mobilization that resulted in it. Participants will review how current foreign legislation on the subject was approved, analysing its strengths and weaknesses. The discussion will be conducted by Christian Wimberger (Christliche Initiative Romero), Johannes Blankenbach (Information Centre on Business and Human Rights, BHRRC) and Manoela Roland (Homa – Human Rights and Business Centre) and mediated by Repórter Brasil. There will be Portuguese-to-English simultaneous translation.

The second day (August 24) will discuss the current fight against violations in supply chains that is already taking place in Brazil, with those who are at the frontline. Mediated by Conectas Human Rights, the discussion will include Labour Judge Marcus Barberino, Labour Prosecutor Ilan Fonseca, and Labour Inspector Thiago Laporte to debate successful cases in which accountability was enforced in Brazil and what is still lacking – or if something is lacking – to advance further.

On the last day (August 31), civil society and workers’ organizations will discuss how we can mobilize people on the subject and whether specific legislation on the topic is needed in Brazil. Mediated by the Information Centre on Business and Human Rights, BHRRC), the debate will include Mercia Silvia (Inpacto) and representatives of Conectas Human Rights, CONTAR (Brazil’s National Confederation of Rural Workers and Family Farmers), and OXFAM Brasil

Each day, there will be space for debate with the guests at the end of the event.

O post Event in August will address supply chain legislation apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Nineteen coffee harvest workers – who had migrated from Vale do Jequitinhonha, one of the poorest areas in the state of Minas Gerais – had almost one third of their wages illegally deducted by the family of the president of the world’s largest coffee cooperative, Cooxupé. The amount deducted was related to the purchase of machinery and fuel to be used in the harvest – which is not allowed by labour legislation.

Labour inspectors found the violation on July 14, during an inspection at the area where the workers were harvesting: the Pedreira Farm in Cabo Verde (southern Minas Gerais), which belongs to the family of Carlos Augusto Rodrigues de Melo, president of the cooperative since 2019. After the violation notification, the farm owners signed an agreement with the Labour Prosecution Service and the Public Defender’s Office to return the money wrongly deducted and pay each worker R$ 2,000 as compensation for moral damages.

Last year, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Cooxupé members doubled their revenues – from R$ 160 million in 2019 to R$ 306 million. The cooperative made record profits in 2020, reaching R$ 5 billion, an increase of almost 20% compared to the R$ 4.2 billion in 2019. Nevertheless, the workers at Cooxupé’s president’s farm had R$ 500 deducted every two weeks from their payments, which vary between R$ 3,400 and R$ 4,000 a month.

The operation was carried out by members of the, the Labour Prosecution Service, the Public Defender’s Office and Federal Highway Police. Agents found that discounts were applied to all workers’ wages during harvest season, which began in May.

Currently, Cooxupé has 14,500 members and sells coffee to major international brands such as Nespresso and Starbucks.

It holds several certifications, including Rainforest Alliance. When contacted, the certifier stated that the Melo family’s Pedreira Farm had been suspended from its program until an audit is conducted. The suspension also applies to the UTZ certification, which merged with Rainforest Alliance in 2018 (Read UTZ’s full statement here).

Nespresso informed Repórter Brasil that it is in contact with the cooperative to “understand the developments of the case.” The company also stated that the Pedreira farm is not among its suppliers. (Read Nespresso’s full statement here). However, about 720 farms linked to the cooperative are certified by Nestlé to sell coffee to Nespresso. Cooxupé sold 65,983 bags to the Swiss brand only in the first quarter of 2021.

The cooperative is also certified by the program of another multinational giant, Starbucks. “We take such allegations extremely seriously and demand that all of our suppliers commit to complying with our Supplier Code of Conduct,” the company said in a note (Read Cooxupé’s full statement here). More than 2,000 Cooxupé member farms supply Starbucks, which, when questioned, did not answer whether it will take any action against the violation committed on the cooperative’s president’s farm.

Starbucks’s and Nespresso’s certification programs have already proved to be flawed in other opportunities, since slave labour has been found in farms supplying both brands and the companies only took a stand after being approached by Repórter Brasil. Good practice certifications serve as references for large buyers and, in theory, should attest that the product complies with labour and environmental legislation. However, Repórter Brasil’s report Certified Coffee, Rightless Workers has already pointed out several flaws in these quality seals.

Contacted by Repórter Brasil, Cooxupé’s press office said that Melo will not comment on labour violations found on his family’s property. In a statement, they said that the Melo family signed a Conducted Adjustment Agreement for “implementing improvements.” He also said that the cooperative “complies with labour legislation” and that “certified rural properties meet the requirements set out in the certifiers’ regulations.”

Melo declined to be interviewed, but in April, while commenting on Cooxupé’s record sales, he told newspaper Folha de São Paulo: “It’s a paradox: the pandemic was causing so much trouble, too much concern, but we managed [to have such good result] after one year with high quantity and quality. This has leveraged the cooperative.”

While coffee production and exports hit record levels, 140 workers were rescued from slave-like labour in Brazil’s coffee plantations only in 2020 – all in Minas Gerais, according to data from the Subsecretariat of Labour Inspection (SIT).

Irregular manoeuvre

Labour inspectors found that farm owners manoeuvred not to pay for equipment that is essential to harvest coffee and not to provide it to workers for free, as required by law.

The money deducted from seasonal workers’ wages was supposed to pay for portable harvesting machines known as derriçadeiras, which pull coffee tree branches to take the beans and are used individually by each employee. The farm used to deduct R$ 500 per month from workers for the purchase of those machines, in addition to around R$ 500 more for fuel (used in the same harvester).

However, the machines would not belong to workers until they paid off their full cost – around R$ 2,700 — which they could not do in one harvest. That is because the coffee harvest usually lasts between four and five months. At R$ 500 per month, the workers would have paid about R$ 2,500 at the end of the harvest season for their harvesters — not enough to take them home.

Under the farm owners’ proposal, if the machines were not fully paid off by the end of the harvest, they would stay on the farm. If workers returned the next harvest, they could use them again, on the same property.

A Brazilian rule governing rural labour (NR-31) determines that employers must provide work tools to their employees free of charge, which includes fuel used in the machines, according to a labour inspector heard by Repórter Brasil.

“Employers must provide work equipment. When employers make this abusive discount from wages, they reduce workers’ earnings,” says the head of the Coordination of Rural Employees of the State of Minas Gerais (Adere), Jorge Ferreira dos Santos, who is also a member of the state board of labour federation CUT.

“Farm owners’ logic is to profit as much as they can from the highest precariousness possible,” the union leader says. Ferreira explains that charging workers to use harvesting machines is illegal, but it is becoming common in southern Minas Gerais.

Deductions have a huge impact on seasonal workers, Ferreira says. That is because what they earn during harvest months is often all they will get throughout the year. “They take it home and support their families until the next harvest,” he explains.

Most coffee workers have migrated from the Jequitinhonha Valley and northern Minas Gerais, in addition to some states in Brazil’s Northeast, especially Bahia. Of the 32 workers found at the Pedreira Farm, 23 came from Santa Maria do Salto, in the Jequitinhonha Valley (MG).

The person in charge of the Pedreira farm is Cooxupé’s president’s daughter Kátia Cristina de Paula Melo. Labour inspectors found that coffee production on the property benefits the family, which includes her parents. In addition, the parents are listed in the documents as having the right to “lifetime usufruct” over the property, despite the farm being registered to Kátia and a brother.

Kátia’s mother Maria de Fátima Fonseca de Paula e Melo went to the Regional Labour Department in Poços de Caldas (MG) a week after the operation and pledged to comply with 14 measures, in addition to returning the money deducted and paying for moral damages: improving transportation for workers; not making deductions from wages that are not cover by law or collective bargaining agreements; providing places for workers to have their meals and toilets at work fronts; providing working tools free of charge and lockers at the accommodations.

If they fail to comply with those obligations, the family of Cooxupé’s president will be fined R$ 10,000 per item plus R$ 1,000 for each worker affected.

* André Campos contributed.

O post Labour inspectors fine leader of cooperative that supplies coffee to Nespresso and Starbucks apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

A raft slides on the waters of a river in a remote area of the Amazon, carrying a Hyundai hydraulic excavator that weighs at least 15 tons into the forest. The scene was recorded by indigenous people and sent to authorities by WhatsApp, along with a request for help. In another situation, a fleet of wheel loaders makes their way through the dense forest of the Munduruku indigenous land, in Pará state, while a helicopter seems to escort the illegal movement of the machines from the sky.

Ubiquitous on construction sites, where they facilitate the heavy work of digging with their articulated mechanical arms, hydraulic excavators and wheel loaders have become major allies of illegal miners advancing into the Amazon. Equipped with large buckets, cabins that rotate to both sides and wheels or tracks that advance over any terrain, these machines can dig huge holes in a few days, even in the middle of the forest, speeding up the work of illegal miners and multiplying their chances of profit. Versatile, they are also used in clearing the forest to open the spaces where illegal mining will take place.

“It’s the most important machine in mining today. The gold is usually on underground layers, so the excavator’s main task is to remove the top layer of earth. The rest of the work at the mining pit is done with water jets, engines and slurry pumps,” explains Federal Police expert Gustavo Caminoto Geiser. No wonder, in the first week of October, when the information that a joint mega-operation including Federal Police, Ibama and Funai was planned for Jacareacanga, Pará, illegal miners rushed to hide the machines in the forest, far from inspectors’ eyes and drone cameras.

A search on  the Brazilian environmental inspection agency (Ibama) open database shows that agents have found, seized and destroyed dozens of hydraulic excavators and wheel loaders operating at illegal mining sites in indigenous lands and protected areas in recent years.

Inspectors not always make full records of the operations, but in at least 17 cases, Repórter Brasil identified the manufacturers of the machines found by authorities in illegal activities. They are all multinational companies that voice their social and environmental commitments on their websites. In practice, however, irregular use of equipment causes serious damage to the environment and human health — and little has been done to curb illegalities.

“Although there is a legal debate about manufacturers’ responsibility, it is a fact that these actors need to be called on to make their businesses sustainable, quitting their deliberate blind attitude and adopting more rigorous mechanisms in sales control,” says Ana Carolina Haliuc, a Federal Prosecutor from the state of Amazonas and head of the Amazon task force.

The Kayapó Indigenous Land under pressure

On September 20, 2018, Ibama agents seized a Caterpillar 3200 SBS 120 backhoe with serial number XA325228. The machine was operating in a gold mining site inside the Sararé IL, which belongs to the Nambikwara people in Mato Grosso, very close to Brazil-Bolivia border.

Equipment has been seized in recent years in the Indigenous Lands Paucalirajausu, also inhabited by the Nambikwara, Sete de Setembro, of the Surui Paiter, on the border of the states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso, Evaré, in Amazonas, an area of ​​the Ticuna People, among others. In most cases, equipment brands are not mentioned on online operation records.

But no area appears so often as the Kayapó IL, in southeast Pará state. According to a 2020 survey conducted by Instituto Socioambiental, this is the indigenous land most impacted by mining in the Xingu basin. In addition to gold, indigenous  leaders denounce illegal extraction of manganese on their lands, as reported by Repórter Brasil last year.

Coincidentally, several records of operations in that location expose machine manufacturers. At the Kayapó IL, in 2017, Ibama inspectors seized two Volvo hydraulic excavators, two Sany brand ones, two Komatsu and three Hyundai machines. Ibama even photographed a New Holland excavator being used in illegal mining.

When contacted by Repórter Brasil, most manufacturers refrained from commenting on the matter.

Controlling usage is impossible, companies say

There is a record of a Link Belt model 210X2 seized in 2018, also at the Kayapó IL. Using the serial number found on Ibama’s database, the company tracked the vehicle and found out that it had been first sold three years earlier, in November 2015. “We were not aware that this machine had been seized by authorities,” admits Matheus Fernandes, Business Manager of Link-Belt’s Latin American Operation.

Manufacturers argue that they impose barriers at the time of sale — Link Belt verifies buyers’ operating licenses, while Komatsu checks customers’ environmental practices before closing the deal. However, both companies say they have no control over what the owners do with the equipment after it leaves the stores.

Komatsu defends itself: “It’s not possible to monitor the entire life cycle of a machine – which can last for decades – when it starts being resold by third parties.”

“When clients purchase excavators, they become the main actors responsible for the operation in which it will be used,” Link Belt’s spokesperson adds. The company installed a system on new excavator models that emits signals and enables them to locate the equipment. However, they can be turned off by operators.

Hyundai, New Holland and Sany said they would not comment.

Caterpillar did not respond to emails sent by Repórter Brasil.

Volvo only said that “it manufactures machines that are marketed through a network of distributors to hundreds of customers” and that it is not aware of the case mentioned in this article. See the full answers from Komatsu, Link Belt and Volvo here.

The situation of a Hyundai dealership, BMC Máquinas — which calls itself the South Korean brand’s “biggest partner” in Brazil — illustrates this difficulty in monitoring. The dealer has already had losses in installment sales in which used machines were given as collateral for the purchase of brand new ones. More than once, when sellers had to repossess excavators because of unpaid debts, they were unable to do it because “the machines were being used in clandestine mines that were inaccessible amid dense forest,” according to BMC CEO Felipe Sica Soares Cavalieri.

To try to overcome this obstacle, the Federal Prosecution Service suggests the creation of a federal technical register to individually accredit and monitor the use of mining equipment. The measure, advocated in the institution’s manual to combat illegal mining, would allow assessing the potential damage that may be caused by equipment based on the size and number of machines planned for use in each mine. “Furthermore, machines should have GPS and/or other tracking equipment, which would help to prevent exciding the limits of mining permits or licensed areas,” the authors recommend.

Brazilian software developers offer free solution

There are already projects using technology as an ally in the fight against illegal mining. In a report on gold smuggling in Brazil, the Igarapé Institute lists warning systems that use sound to detect human activity in the forest caused, for example, by chainsaws, excavators and boat engines.

Another of these innovative solutions was developed in Brazil. Code of Conscience is a software program that, once installed on a machine’s on-board computer, issues alerts or even switches off the vehicle’s engine when it approaches protected areas. Because it is recorded in the machine’s memory, operators cannot to turn it off as occurs with the telemetry technology provided by manufacturers.

“It’s very hard to get humans to stop destroying forests, but we think we could stop the machines if we built some sort of digital protection shield for natural areas,” says Hugo Veiga, global creative director of AKQA, the company that developed the software.

The company is working with the government of a country where there is Amazon rainforest to implement a pilot version, but it cannot reveal the name of the country. It is also negotiating the use of the code “with some heavy machinery companies” and has the support of an international NGO to apply pressure. But Veiga recognizes that the process is slower than he would like.

“We realized that for changes to happen, the entire system has to adopt the code. When companies lose business because they don’t have the Code of Conscience installed on their machines, the change will have started,” he believes.

Power and profit as obstacles

Initiatives for greater control of the supply chain come up against the million-dollar market that surrounds illegal mining. According to calculations by Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy, this illegal market makes between three and four billion reais a year in the country.

In towns where gold is the main driver of the economy, there are dealerships of famous heavy machinery brands and stores where it is easy to find the desired model. “In Itaituba, Pará, there is no construction industry to justify the several stores specializing in excavators. The only building taller than a house in town is the hospital,” says Federal Police expert Gustavo Caminoto Geiser, referring to what is considered the gold capital the Amazon, also known as “the nugget town.”

Indeed, Hyundai’s representative in Itaituba, Roberto Katsuda, does not hide the identity of its customers. In a public hearing held at the Town Council, which Repórter Brasil attended in 2019, Katsuda thanked “the mining class” for the 600 hydraulic excavators sold in town between 2013 and 2019. “You are the ones who put food on my family’s table,” he added.

One of the companies in which he is a partner, World Tractor Comercial e Importadora, is the target of a civil investigation by the Federal Prosecution Service in Pará to determine machine suppliers’ responsibility in the damage caused by illegal mining.

When asked by Repórter Brasil, Katsuda declined to comment on the inquiry and changed the subject: “We sell equipment throughout Brazil and we are grateful to those who believe in our product, whether they are legal miners or construction or mining companies.”

The investment to buy a hydraulic excavator is high. In Ibama’s list accessed by the report, inspectors estimated values ​​between R$ 50,000 and R$ 500,000 for the vehicles seized. But a group of miners investigated by the Federal Police in Pará paid R$ 1 million for one of these machines and spent four times more on two excavators than on a plane.

Therefore, the Prosecution Service says that miners would not be able to buy this heavy machinery because they are mostly poor people. “People who work in the illegal mining market today should not be called garimpeiros (small-scale miners). They are entrepreneurs who use business mechanisms to organize the extraction of mineral goods, with major capital investment,” Prosecutor Haliuc says.

Driven by the profit resulting from the activity, instead of moving away from protected areas as the authorities demand, violators want to change the law. The authorities are investigating the origin of resources that paid for a trip to Brasília by indigenous peoples to advocate opening their territories to mining. They pressured lawmakers to approve Bill 191/2019, which authorizes mineral exploitation in indigenous lands. Devised by the Bolsonaro administration, the bill ignores the constitutional ban on mineral extraction in protected territories and legalizes mining, even against indigenous people’s will.

The National Gold Association (Associação Nacional do Ouro, Anoro), on the other hand, delivered a proposal to Vice President Hamilton Mourão in which mining entrepreneurs and financial institutions undertake to fight illegal mining as long as the federal government guarantees that equipment will no longer be destroyed and regularizes mining on indigenous lands.

“The way to remedy [the damage caused by illegal mining] is relatively simple, despite being hampered by lack of political will to implement such changes, clearly demonstrated by the strong mining lobby and conflicts of interest that extend from the municipal level to the federal level,” concludes the Igarapé Institute.

O post How backhoe makers encourage illegal mining in the Amazon apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) is financing meatpacking companies that slaughter animals raised on farms that have been illegally deforested, interdicted by Ibama, overlapping conservation units or indigenous lands, and that use slave labour in their activities. This is revealed by a Repórter Brasil exclusive report that looked into loans totalling R$ 46 million given to 25 small slaughterhouses located in the Amazon, where 90% of all the forest felled becomes pasture for livestock.

Since 2009, the bank’s internal regulations have banned loans to meatpacking companies that have farms with social and environmental irregularities among their suppliers. But the provision that determines that contracts should be cancelled in case of non-compliance was not followed in the cases found by Repórter Brasil.

“To obtain funding from BNDES, meat companies can only source cattle from suppliers that are not on the list of areas interdicted by Ibama. Furthermore, they cannot appear on the Ministry of Labour’s ‘dirty list,’” explained a press release published on the bank’s website in July 2009.

Nevertheless, in 2012, 2016 and 2017, meat companies Masterboi, São Francisco, Ribeiro Soares, Fortefrigo, Mercúrio (Pará) and Boi Branco (Mato Grosso) – all of which have BNDES funding – slaughtered at least 11,513 animals from farms interdicted by Ibama and 1,479 raised on properties included in Brazil’s dirty list of slave labour. A total of 25,158 head of cattle came from areas that did not even have environmental licenses to operate – another practice banned by resolution 1854/2009.

The irregularities were found by the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF) in audits carried out on the companies’ purchases, both in their own investigations (in the case of Boi Branco) and as a result of the Conduct Adjustment Agreements (so-called Meat TACs) that verify social and environmental compliance in their operations. In all cases, illegal slaughter was made public after BNDES signed contracts with the companies that, according to resolution 1854/2009, must provide statements saying that they do not source from irregular producers. False information must be sanctioned “with early contract termination without prejudice to applicable legal sanctions.”

In the case of the Masterboi, the contracts totalled R$ 10.5 million when the problems with suppliers were revealed. Mercúrio and Ribeiro Soares had loans of R$ 4 million each; Fortefrigo had R$ 1 million; and São Francisco (Sampaio) had R$ 100,000 in loans. Boi Branco’s contract, worth R$ 72,000, was signed a month before the company was sued by the Federal Prosecution Service for illegal slaughter at its plants.

BNDES’ Transparency Portal shows that part of these loans are still active — which indicates that the sanction provided for by resolution 1854/2009 was not applied.

BNDES did not comment on the cases, although it asked Repórter Brasil to extend the deadline by more than 30 days. After informing that the answers to the questions were “being validated,” the bank stopped responding to e-mails. Masterboi, Fortefrigo and São Francisco (Sampaio) did not respond either, despite Repórter Brasil’s insistence. Mercúrio, Ribeiro Soares and Boi Branco sustain that they comply with their social and environmental commitments and that the irregularities pointed out were isolated cases. Full responses can be read here.

The data used in this report were obtained by the Forests and Finance coalition, which monitors the support given by banks and credit institutions to potentially deforesting activities. The group tracked a total of US$ 2.3 billion in BNDES loans for livestock that threaten Brazil’s environment.

In early October, a new round of audits released by the Federal Prosecution Service in Pará — covering cattle purchases from January 2018 to June 2019 — showed that irregularities continue to go unpunished. Among the 16 companies assessed, Fortefrigo and São Francisco (Sampaio) came fourth and fifth in terms of noncompliance, with 18.7% and 15.2% of their purchases having some socio-environmental issue, respectively. JBS – the world’s largest producer of animal protein – tops the list of violations, with problems in 32% of its slaughter.

Itaú, BB and Bradesco should enforce rules

Loans granted to meatpackers with irregularities were intermediated by financial institutions that are BNDES partners: Itaú Unibanco, Banco do Brasil and Bradesco. According to resolution 1854/2009, in this type of loan – called automatic indirect – intermediaries must “require statements” from companies guaranteeing that they have systems in place to monitor their cattle suppliers and follow the standards required by BNDES. But, according to the Prosecution Service’s audits and investigations, that control was clearly flawed.

At least one of the several BNDES loans obtained by Masterboi through Itaú Unibanco remained active after the problems emerged. Ribeiro Soares still has two contracts signed through Banco do Brasil, even after violations were found. Both institutions said that they will not comment on specific cases because of corporate secrecy but listed their methods to verify social and environmental compliance before granting loans. The company’s full explanation can be read here.

Bradesco, on the other hand, has seven loans made with BNDES funds to Mercúrio and one to São Francisco (Sampaio), despite confirmation of environmental non-compliance. Bradesco also intermediated the contract with Boi Branco, which was scheduled to end in 2018. When contacted, the bank said it would not comment.

“Itaú Unibanco and Bradesco are two of the three largest private banks in Brazil that signed a pact to promote sustainable development in the Amazon. They are expected to follow the guidelines for loans in livestock,” observes Paulo Barreto, a researcher at Imazon (The Amazon Institute for Man and the Environment).INFOGRAPHIC: Loans by Itaú, BB, Bradesco

Risk ignored

The 25 small meatpackers investigated by Repórter Brasil were selected for putting 8 million hectares of Amazon forests at risk. The calculation, published in a 2017 study by Imazon, considers that its potential suppliers include many farms located in deforested areas, with interdictions already declared by Ibama or whose surrounding conditions indicate that devastation is imminent.

It is a territory the size of Austria and more than twice as large as the area threatened by JBS’s activities. The company is the largest meat manufacturer on the planet, which tops Imazon’s deforestation exposure list.

INFOGRAPHIC: Financing for the 25 slaughterhouses

Hence the importance of monitoring suppliers. “Illegal cattle is the top driver of deforestation in the Amazon. If there is no control over the origin of the raw material, the risk of social and environmental violations is high,” says Prosecutor Ricardo Negrini, who works in Pará, where the first Conduct Adjustment Agreements for the Meat industry were signed in 2009.

Although BNDES requires that meatpackers have monitoring systems to check the origin of animals slaughtered, 10 companies that received a total of R$ 13.2 million did not sign the Meat Agreement with the Prosecution Service. According to the researcher from Imazon, this is a strong indication that those companies do not have such systems in place. “In general, companies that do not sign the Agreement do not monitor the cattle,” he notes.

Even Brazil’s largest meat industries – JBS, Marfrig and Minerva – only developed their systems after signing the agreement. Corroborating this suspicion, the Prosecution Service asked Ibama to tighten inspections on 7 of the 10 slaughterhouses that had BNDES loans but had not signed such agreements.

“Companies should demonstrate a basic level of compliance and organization so that the financial institution can feel safe when granting credit. These meatpackers are taking a lot of environmental risks, but they won’t commit to sectorial agreements and they get public funds anyway,” says Lisandro Inakake, who coordinates NGO Imaflora’s Boi na Linha project, a tool that provides greater transparency in cattle sourcing so that consumers can verify the origin of what they buy.

INFOGRAPHIC: Funding with and without Conduct Adjustment Agreements

Deforestation without interdiction and cattle on indigenous land do not count

Even if the clause providing for early termination of contracts with companies that source from illegal areas were enforced, most of the problems would not be covered by resolution 1854/2009. According to the Prosecution Service’s audits, Masterboi, Mercúrio, São Francisco (Sampaio), Ribeiro Soares and Fortefrigo purchased 5,441 head of cattle raised on indigenous lands and 62,845 animals from illegally deforested farms. But according to BNDES, these suppliers should only be excluded from the supply chain if they were convicted of these crimes in all judicial instances.

BNDES loans given through commercial banks, such as those analysed in this article, also turn a blind eye to possible irregularities by indirect suppliers — those who sell animals to the farms that will then resell them to the companies.

Therefore, the almost R$ 2 million in fines imposed by Ibama on Mercúrio for the purchase of 3,767 head of cattle from interdicted farms would not be enough for the bank to sanction the company, since the animals entered the production line through indirect suppliers. The fact that the company’s indirect suppliers included ranchers that raised cattle in the Apyterewa Indigenous Land, in Pará, and farmers using slave labour, was also overlooked as revealed by Repórter Brasil in 2020 and 2021.

Resolution 1854/2009 determines that this link in the supply chain should only be monitored when loans are signed directly with BNDES or when the development bank becomes a partner in the companies, as is the case with JBS. Even that part of the rule, however, never got off the ground.

“Sustainability policies cannot be just words; they have to be actually enforced, with transparency and accountability to society,” concludes attorney Ricardo Negrini.

O post BNDES finances meatpacking companies that source from deforested farms and use slave labour apareceu primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

A simple internet search quickly shows the biggest exporters of soy, coffee, cattle or iron ore. But there is a strange silence when it comes to gold: presidents of institutions in the sector say they do not know the exporters; the Federal Revenue Service and the Central Bank claim tax confidentiality.

The mystery surrounding gold exports has been broken by an exclusive Repórter Brasil investigation that sheds light on the largest exporter of gold from Brazilian wildcat mines known as garimpos. It reveals that part of the gold exported by the company may have illegal origin, often clandestinely extracted from indigenous lands and protected forests in the Amazon, causing irreversible social and environmental damage.

BP Trading saw exponential growth in the last two years, with revenues of R$ 1.4 billion in 2019 and whose founders were investigated under the Car Wash Operation. They are accused by the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF) of laundering money when they worked at Banco Paulista – a bank that has close links with the trading company with the same initials.

When contacted, BP Trading stated that “it maintains strict controls over the origin of the mineral purchased from its suppliers.”

An analysis of BP’s financial statements reveals that the company’s main clients include two so-called Security Distributors (DTVMs), that is, financial companies authorized to purchase gold) accused by the Federal Prosecution Service of trading illegal gold extracted in Pará: FD’Gold and Carol DTVM.

These two DTVMs, together with Ourominas, are the main buyers of illegal gold, accounting for more than 70% of all illegal or potentially illegal product, according to a recent study conducted by the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in collaboration with Federal Prosecutors. Of all the metal bought by these companies in 2019 and 2020 in Pará, at least 60% have no proven origin, says the study.

Based on these conclusions, the Prosecutors filed a Public Civil Action in August, asking for the activities of these DTVMs to be suspended and demanding R$ 10.6 billion as compensation for socio-environmental damages.

In addition to FD’Gold and Carol DTVM, a third supplier to the trading company is Coluna DTVM, which was targeted by the Federal Police for acquiring gold from illegal mining sites, as shown exclusively by Repórter Brasil in partnership with Amazônia Real. In an investigation published in June – when we revealed how the gold that leaves the Yanomami Indigenous Territory is illegally purchased by middlemen and DTVMs, and may end up in large Brazilian jewelry stores, such as HStern.

Illegal gold extracted from clandestine mines or protected areas – a practice that is banned by Brazilian law – is “legalized” when DTVMs buy the product. Sellers fill out a paper invoice declaring the origin of that gold – fraudsters can say that it came from a legal mine, even when that is not true. The problem is that Law 12844/2013, which regulates the purchase, sale and transport of gold in Brazil, states that gold sales are based on sellers’ good faith – thus exempting buyers from any responsibility.

BP leads exports of gold from wildcat mines, but it is not the largest exporter in Brazil. The leaders are big mining companies such as Anglogold Ashanti and Kinross – which operate throughout the entire supply chain, from extraction to export. BP operates only in exports, purchasing gold from DTVMs, which, in turn, buy it from – legal or illegal – miners.

BP accounted for about 10% of sales to foreign customers in the last two years, as pointed out by Repórter Brasil, in a market that exported 202.6 tonnes (US$ 8.6 billion) in 2019 and 2020. According to the company, its main customers are in Canada and England.

Concentrated market

This supply chain of gold from wildcat mining is related to the National Gold Association (Anoro), since these three DTVMs and BP Trading seat on its board and are active participants in its assemblies, according to new documents obtained by Repórter Brasil.

The report found at least two direct links between BP and Anoro’s president Dirceu Frederico Sobrinho – who began his career in the industry as a wildcat miner and has strong connections in the upper echelon of Jair Bolsonaro’s government. A company owned by Sobrinho – FD’Gold – supplies gold while another one refines it for BP Trading: that is Marsam Refinadora, whose partners are Sobrinho and his daughter. Marsam is also a member of Anoro’s board.

“It’s important to pay attention to how concentrated the irregularities are. A few actors control them,” says UFMG researcher Raoni Rajão, responsible for the most recent and relevant study on illegality in the sector. “We are talking about few actors controlling mining processes: only six mining site owners account for more than 60% of the gold without declared origin, while only three DTVMs buy more than 70% of that potentially illegal metal.” According to the Prosecution Service’s Public Civil Action, these three companies are Ourominas, FD’Gold and Carol DTVM.

Anoro did not respond to Repórter Brasil’s several attempts at communication by e-mail and telephone.

Billion-dollar figures

A source connected to the sector who asked for anonymity explains how the market works. Demand for gold starts abroad, with orders placed by international buyers with trading companies. These exporters turn to DTVMs, which buy it from miners. “BP finances the supply chain [in Brazil]. It deposits the money in advance on DTVMs’ bank accounts, which, in turn, have three days to settle transactions.”

Financial analysis of these companies’ balance sheets – both DTVMs and BP Trading – shows how the latter’s results stand out. Furthermore, while illegal mines in indigenous lands mushroom and violence increases in villages – even with participation of organized crime – BP has accumulated impressive results.

While DTVMs such as FD’Gold and Carol had gross revenues of BRL 15.6 million and BRL 13.5 million in 2019, respectively, BP Trading declared revenues of BRL 1.4 billion in its balance sheet for the same year – more than twice its 2018 results (BRL 659 million). Founded in 2015 and headquartered at São Paulo’s Faria Lima Avenue, BP earned R$ 10.7 million in profits in 2019 – 73 times more than two years earlier.

In 2019, BP received the equivalent of R$ 57 million in gold, of which R$ 18 million were purchased from FD’Gold, R$ 12 million from the Coluna DTVM, and R$ 870,000 from Carol DTVM.

Another BP client and supplier deserves attention: it is Banco Paulista, which has been investigated by the Car Wash Operation for two years. In 2019, the bank traded R$ 26 million in gold with BP, according to the latter’s balance sheet.

Two former BP partners are accused of money laundering

BP Trading’s close relations with Banco Paulista are not limited to the bank being cited as its client and supplier in its 2019 balance sheet. BP was founded in 2015 by Álvaro Augusto Vidigal (whose family created Banco Paulista and who has a long history in the financial sector) and by Tarcísio Rodrigues Joaquim, then the bank’s foreign exchange director. In May, prosecutors accused both of organized crime, money laundering and active corruption as a result of suspicious operations in the exchange department of Banco Paulista. The charges have not yet been considered by the courts.

In early 2019, the bank was targeted by the Lava Jato operation. According to the prosecutors, Banco Paulista would have laundered R$ 48 million in funds deposited abroad and belonging to construction company Odebrecht. During a Federal Police operation, three directors of Banco Paulista were arrested – including Tarcísio Joaquim – but released a month later.

Brazil’s Central Bank also fined Banco Paulista almost R$ 10 million last year “for failing to report abnormal/atypical movements of funds to the Council for Financial Activities Control (Coaf),” among other violations.

As a result of the investigations, fines and lawsuits, Vidigal and Joaquim left BP Trading in 2019, opening the way for Francisco Ferreira Junior and Ernesto José dos Santos to take charge of the company. Current director Ernesto Santos has also been investigated for money laundering when he was a partner at Zera Promotora, suspected of being part of the scheme with Banco Paulista and Odebrecht. Despite investigations pointing out that he would have received R$ 17 million in fake contracts, Santos was not charged by the Paraná Prosecution Service.

The downfall of Banco Paulista after the Car Wash Operation led several of the bank’s employees to migrate to BP Trading, especially with the closure of the bank’s foreign exchange desk, thus strengthening BP’s operations. The current president of BP Trading, Francisco Ferreira, used to hold a management position at the bank. At least six other former Banco Paulista employees currently work at BP, including directors, supervisors and managers.

Vidigal – the former BP partner – has businesses in a variety of segments, including financial brokerage firms. He and Francisco Ferreira Junior, current director of BP Trading, were partners with Anoro’s president Dirceu Sobrinho at refiner Marsam Metais. The partnership started in early 2020 and was dissolved in May this year.

Through his lawyers, Vidigal said on a note that he had decided to step down from Banco Paulista’s board of directors for personal reasons. About the charges filed by the Prosecution Service, he denies any involvement in the crimes and said he is confident he will be acquitted.

Also through his lawyers, Tarcísio Joaquim stated that he owned only 1% of BP Trading and that he has not been a partner since May 2019. He adds that he has never held any management or administration position in the company. Ernesto José Santos could not be located for comments.

On a note, BP Trading said that the increase in the company’s profits is linked to “market factors” such as supply, price and scale. The company also stated that it is “a necessary condition for its operations that the gold is accompanied by legally required documents.” BP also said that “Banco Paulista is just one of the banks in which it has a checking account”.

FD’ Gold limited itself to saying that “it does not know the content of the lawsuit and the object of the charges [filed by the Prosecution Service].” Carol DTVM stated that it only buys gold from mining sites authorized by the National Mining Agency.

Ourominas said that it has a “strict internal control system” to prevent purchase of illegal products and that it has not seen the lawsuit’ records. Read the full answers here.

Using the Access to Information Act, Repórter Brasil unsuccessfully tried to obtain a complete list of the largest gold exporters in the country as well as the main foreign buyers – the Federal Revenue and the Central Bank claim confidentiality. Organizations in the sector do not know, will not speak or will not reveal names. Anoro did not respond to several attempts at communication.

“We don’t know those companies’ names, the destination of their exports, or their buyers. Everything is protected by confidentiality. In the end, we have no information about gold exports in Brazil,” complained José Augusto, president of the Brazilian Foreign Trade Association, about the industry’s lack of transparency.

If DTVMs are sourcing gold from illegal mining sites, they are also contaminating the exports with the illegal product. The problem is that, under the current legislation regulating the sector, sellers are responsible for declaring the origin of the gold. That is, illegal gold is “laundered” before reaching DTVMs. That is a serious problem of product traceability whose solution involves creating a new mechanism for declaration of origin, such as electronic invoices, as advocated by some organizations in the sector.

“We are considering ways to tackle this problem, improve inspections, advance legislation and prevent this illegal gold from continuing to circulate and therefore from being exported,” says the director-president of the Brazilian Mining Association, Flavio Ottoni Penido. While nothing is done, traditional peoples living in the Amazon succumb to forest destruction, contamination of rivers by mercury, and division of their villages.

*Maurício Angelo contributed

Note: This text was updated on October 21, 2021 at 6:01 pm to include Tarcísio Rodrigues Joaquim’s stance.”

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End of meal vouchers and paid commuting hours, lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), illegal searches, and pregnant women fired: working conditions among seasonal harvest employees at Cutrale – one of the world’s leading orange producers – get worse with each harvest, according to workers from the company’s farms heard by Repórter Brasil.

In 2020, Cutrale suspended meal vouchers, which provided a R$ 240.00 increase in orange pickers’ earnings. In addition, temporary employees hired to work from May to February are no longer paid for the time they spend traveling to and from the farms. Brazil’s 2017 labour reform cancelled what used to be a mandatory benefit.

Daniel,* 52 years old, has been working for three years at Cutrale’s farms in the Araraquara, SP, area. In this year’s harvest, he reports having been paid R$ 1,300.00 reais a month on average – just R$ 200.00 above the national minimum wage. The previous harvest, however, was even worse for workers interviewed by Repórter Brasil.

Thirty-year-old Maria* reports having worked at Cutrale for nine months between 2019 and 2020. In addition to monthly wages, she was paid around R$ 150.00 at the end of her employment contract. At the time, Cutrale had changed its method for hiring seasonal workers, who now have temporary employment contracts that do not include benefits such as unemployment insurance.

With the change in the company’s hiring policy, without meal vouchers and paid commuting time, Maria’s monthly earnings did not exceed R$ 1,200.00 – it took her about one hour and a half to get from home to the company’s orange fields.

“We worked and got nothing when we left,” Daniel explains. “We didn’t get [unemployment] insurance or the 40% fine over our Time of Service fund. Meal vouchers were also cut. This year, the contract is normal but does not include the R$ 240.00 voucher.”

“If they paid for the meal vouchers and commuting time, employees’ monthly earnings would be around R$ 1,800.00,” explains Aparecido Bispo, education secretary of the São Paulo State Federation of Rural Wage Workers (Feraesp). In other words, harvest workers saw their earnings drop by approximately 30%.

Cutrale is one of the world’s largest producers of orange juice. It has five factories and dozens of farms in Brazil, as well as industrial operations in the United States. It is the largest orange juice supplier to Coca-Cola – which, in turn, owns orange beverage brands sold by the world’s main supermarkets and large fast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King.

Contacted by Repórter Brasil, Cutrale did not comment on the problems reported by the workers.

“A company that is so rich but won’t even provide PPE for its workers?”

While rights such as meal vouchers and paid commuting time ceased to be guaranteed after recent changes in Brazilian labour legislation, lack of PPE and toilets in the fields, and dismissal of female harvest workers after they report they are pregnant are still against the law.

The workers report that, Cutrale’s farms in at least three municipalities in the Araraquara area do not provide enough PPE for everyone, and there are no proper sizes. Daniel and Maria used to work with 30 other workers overseen by group supervisors known as “turmeiros,” who were in charge of recruiting them, providing transportation and overseeing the weighing of the oranges harvested by each worker.

“We ask for PPE and the supervisor won’t give it; he says he doesn’t have it. I told him once: ‘A company that is so rich but won’t even provide PPE for its workers?,’” Daniel recalls. He claims that only boots and leg protections were provided, and workers had to buy other items such as gloves and hats.

“Sometimes we’d talk to the people in charge of the farm about the lack of PPE, but it didn’t help. Nothing happened,” Maria adds, while also reporting lack of toilets at the fields: “I had to relieve myself among the orange trees.”

“PPEs have expiration dates, but the supervisors are not replacing them when they wear out. When the company doesn’t replace the PPE, it puts workers at risk,” Feraesp’s Bispo points out.

Pregnant workers fired

Maria stopped working at Cutrale farms in August 2021. After three months registered as a seasonal harvest worker, she found out she was pregnant and informed the company. “I got pregnant while I was working there. I sent them the test, they told me to stay at home because of the pandemic, and then I was fired,” she says. More than 30 days passed between the date she communicated her pregnancy and her dismissal by Cutrale.

In the case of pregnant workers, the brazilian legislation guarantees temporary employment stability for up to five months after giving birth. During this period, termination only takes place legally if it occurs for just cause. A law enacted in May 2021 also guaranteed that pregnant employees do not have to perform in-person activities during the pandemic. In cases of tasks that cannot be performed remotely such as harvesting oranges, workers are entitled to paid leave or tasks adapted to remote work.

Maria claims she was not the only pregnant woman who was fired. “I know a colleague who became pregnant and was sent away when she was seven months pregnant.” For Feraesp’s Aparecido Bispo, the report is surprising. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen a complaint about companies firing pregnant workers. That’s very serious, and it rarely happens.”

That is not so rare at Cutrale. The company has already been convicted for firing pregnant workers. In February 2013, it was sentenced to pay R$ 500,000 as compensation for collective damages for discriminating against pregnant employees. At the time, Cutrale denied the charges and appealed the decision.

Illegal searches

According to the workers heard by Repórter Brasil, at the end of each workday, farm supervisors inspect each worker’s belongings before the group boards the bus that will take them back home. “Every day we have to open our backpacks and show supervisors what’s in them,” Daniel explains. “If one day the supervisor finds out that someone is bringing home oranges from the company, he will give the worker a warning and may terminate their contract with just cause.”

In 2018, the Labour Court of Araraquara ordered the company to pay R$ 2 million as compensation for collective moral damages, for carrying out that type of search. Cutrale, which appealed the decision, issued a statement at the time saying that “in some cases, unfortunately, employees’ belongings must be visually checked at the end of the day to protect company property.”

Lack of transparency in weighing

Weighing harvested oranges is another stressful situation reported by workers. Payment is calculated by bag picked – one bag is equivalent to 20 orange boxes. According to Daniel and Maria, group supervisors often receive the 20 boxes collected but count only 19 or 18.

“He probably counts [the missing boxes] for someone,” explains Feraesp’s Bispo. “Sometimes he has a relative there or his wife works with him, and he counts that box for the wife. We’ve heard this type of complaint.”

“Workers are losing around one to three boxes per bag. If the supervisor measures it wrong, he’s robbing the workers during weighing. Just imagine that happening for a whole month: its’ around 70 boxes. There will be very serious reduction in payment. Why are supervisors not being transparent? The company must do something about it,” Bispo points out.

Overtime

Workers also point out that they are often forced to work in heavy rain or do overtime on Saturdays to meet production targets set by supervisors. “We work all week and, on Saturdays, we sometimes leave at 11 am or 12 pm. He’ll keep us there until the truck is loaded. One Saturday we left at 2 pm,” Daniel recalls.

Controlling overtime pay is difficult since there is no Internet access. At Cutrale’s farms where the employees interviewed by Repórter Brasil work, payslips are provided online, and only workers with Internet access can consult them. “When you ask for the payslip at the farm, they are legally obliged to provide it, but they don’t. I remember two workers who asked for their payslips but the company didn’t give it to them,” Daniel recalls.

“No union came where I work. And I’m sure that if workers keep talking about unions, they’ll be fired”, he says. “This job is bad, but it’s all we’ve got,” Maria adds.

History of violations

Since 2016, 133 inspection operations were carried out at Cutrale’s farms, according to a survey conducted by labour inspectors from the Ministry of Economy’s Special Secretariat for Social Security and Labour. The fines applied to the company’s properties show that, since 2015, most violations are related to noncompliance with NR-31 – the main Regulatory Standard for Safety and Health in rural areas – 71 cases – and with regulations about rest and working hours, with 12 and 11 cases, respectively.

Before that, slave labour had been found at the company in 2013, at the Vale Verde and Pontal farms, in Minas Gerais’ Triângulo area. The 23 workers rescued by federal government inspectors were housed in extremely precarious conditions, had no paid weekly rest and, in some cases, had to go into debt to purchase food and hygiene items – which they could only buy from their employer.

The Labour Prosecution Service has also filed several lawsuits against Cutrale. In 2015, prosecutors filed a Public Civil Action (ACP) against the company for exposing orange harvest workers to precarious health and safety conditions. The lawsuits were motivated by 90 violations registered by labour inspectors in 13 Cutrale farms between August 2012 and February 2015. Three years later, the company was ordered to pay R$ 300,000 as compensation for collective moral damages, but it appealed the decision.

More recently, in March 2019, Feraesp representatives denounced to the Labour Inspection Secretariat the precarious accommodation and working conditions of orange harvest workers on a farm in the municipality of Ubirajara, 200 km from Araraquara. The area was part of a consortium of farmers that supplied oranges to Cutrale.

During the inspection on the property, which was accompanied by Repórter Brasil, workers – including a teenager – were found working without adequate PPE and with nor access to toilets or drinking water. Their monthly pay did not even reach the legal minimum wage.

During the inspection on the property, which was accompanied by Repórter Brasil, workers – including a teenager – were found working without adequate PPE and with nor access to toilets or drinking water. Their monthly pay did not even reach the legal minimum wage.

*Names changed to protect identity

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