Can we repair a crime against humanity? The question is now being asked in Brazil, where an investigation by the federal prosecutor’s office was opened on September 27. The target is no less than Banco do Brasil (Bank of Brazil, BB), the oldest public bank and one of the main financial institutions in the country, implicated for its involvement in slavery and the slave trade in the 19th centurye century.
Revealed by the media BBC News Brasil, this civil action is the result of a petition signed by fourteen historians specializing in the subject. “This is an unprecedented process. Brazilian justice will finally look into the injuries inflicted by large institutions during slavery and work for a real policy of reparation.greets Julio Araujo, prosecutor at the federal public prosecutor’s office and responsible for the case.
The researchers attacked a national symbol. With 86,000 employees, 75 million customers and nearly 400 billion euros in assets, Banco do Brasil is one of the largest financial institutions in Latin America, 50% of whose capital is held by the State. Brazilian. Its agencies number in the thousands and are present in almost every city in the country.
Generous loans and credits
But this success hides a dark side. Founded in 1808 by the Portuguese monarchy, then in exile in Rio de Janeiro to flee the Napoleonic invasions, the “BB” also participated fully in the system of slavery. Historians criticize it in particular for having financed itself by taxing slave ships coming from Africa, but also for having granted generous loans and credits to many slave traffickers.
Refounded in 1853 after bankruptcy, the bank then counted among its main shareholders several unsavory characters, including José Bernardino de Sa, one of the richest men in Brazil at the time. A landowner, he would also have personally participated in the deportation of 20,000 slaves, despite a law which had since prohibited 1850 the slave trade.
In three centuries, nearly five million Africans were landed in Brazil (nearly half of the Atlantic slave trade), where slavery was only finally abolished in 1888. “The “slave” system required enormous capital and its actors needed very significant funding. Obviously, the Banco do Brasil played this role”notes Martha Abreu, professor at Rio State University and signatory of the legal action.
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