In 2017, the owners of J&F Investimentos were arrested. The charge: bribery. Millions of dollars are said to have flowed to officials and government members in Brazil. For J&F, the process ends with a settlement – which, however, is expensive.
The holding company J&F Investimentos, to which the world's largest meat company JBS belongs, has been found guilty in a US court of having paid more than $ 150 million in bribes to senior Brazilian officials over a decade. As part of the settlement agreement with the US Department of Justice, J&F Investimentos has to pay more than $ 250 million in fines to Brazilian and US authorities. This emerges from a letter from JBS to its shareholders.
The US Department of Justice in Washington accused the company of a long-term plot to bribe corrupt officials in Brazil. Executives have used banks, companies and real estate in the US to pay government officials millions of dollars in bribes, the ministry said. With its anti-corruption law "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act", the USA is also pursuing allegations of bribery beyond its own national borders.
According to the Brazilian political portal O Antagonista, the group's lawyer, Lucio Martins Batista, said the bribe system J&F Investimentos had secured access to funds from the Brazilian development bank BNDES to buy US companies such as the food company Pilgrim's Pride and the meat company Swift & Company. JBS has repeatedly been involved in scandals in Brazil, including a rotten meat scandal in 2017, in which the EU imposed a partial ban on Brazilian imports, and a corruption scandal in which then-President Michel Temer was indicted.
The owners of J&F Investimentos, brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista, were arrested. Joesley Batista had also handed over recordings of a conversation with President Temer to the judiciary. These suggested that an accomplice in bribes, former parliamentary president Eduardo Cunha, was being used to deter revelations with monetary payments. Temer is said to have collected bribes for his PMDB party from Joesley Batista for years. J&F Investimentos claims to have more than 250,000 employees and a presence in 190 countries.
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