Transnational Legal Coalition Files 14 Complaints Against JBS

The Transnational Legal Coalition (TLC), an alliance of environmental and human rights advocacy organizations, filed 14 simultaneous legal complaints against JBS and its European financial partners. The filings were submitted to regulators and prosecutors in Britain, Ireland, Germany, and the Netherlands, accusing the world's largest meat company of facilitating money laundering using proceeds from illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

The coalition alleges that JBS used revenue from cattle raised on illegally cleared land to pay EU-based financiers, investment managers, and advisers. Named institutions include BlackRock, Barclays, Rabobank, and ING. The complaints specifically target BlackRock's Dublin operations and argue that these firms failed to detect and report suspicious transactions linked to criminal proceeds. The legal action relies on research from the nonprofit AidEnvironment, which identified thousands of suppliers linked to JBS slaughterhouses across five Brazilian states.

JBS denied the allegations, stating it has monitored cattle suppliers in the Amazon since 2010 using satellite imagery and geo-referencing to block farms linked to illegal deforestation. Rabobank stated its policies bar financing deforestation, while other named institutions either declined to comment or claimed they had not yet seen the complaints. The TLC maintains that cattle ranching is the primary driver of illegal deforestation and that such activity is a crime rather than a business model.