14 complaints hit JBS in Europe

Fourteen legal complaints were filed Wednesday with European regulators and prosecutors targeting JBS and its financial partners. The filings accuse the world's largest meat company and its banks, investment managers, and advisers of facilitating money laundering linked to illegal deforestation in Brazil's Amazon.

The complaints were submitted to financial authorities in Britain, Ireland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Britain's National Crime Agency and Dutch bodies overseeing financial and legal professionals also received the documents. A separate criminal referral was sent to Dutch prosecutors regarding JBS's Dutch parent company.

Bláithín Quigley, coordinator for the newly formed Transnational Legal Coalition, said the group aims to prompt investigations and put financiers on notice. "Illegal deforestation of the Amazon is a crime, not a business model. Indigenous communities and various civil society groups have been fighting corporate profiteering from this destruction for decades," Quigley said.

The coalition includes the Global Legal Action Network, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Mighty Earth, FIND, and a law professor from King's College London. The group argues that JBS pays EU-based financiers and advisers using revenue from cattle raised on allegedly illegally cleared land. This triggers obligations under anti-money laundering laws.

JBS responded in a statement to The Associated Press that it had not received the data or methodology behind the allegations. The company said it has monitored cattle suppliers in the Amazon since 2010. JBS stated its system analyzes more than 600,000 square kilometers of Brazilian territory daily. It automatically blocks farms with illegal deforestation, embargoed areas, or overlap with Indigenous lands.

The legal cases rely on research commissioned by the nonprofit AidEnvironment. Researchers used Brazil's mandatory animal health records to identify farms linked to cattle purchased by JBS slaughterhouses. They then cross-referenced those properties with official deforestation maps. The analysis covered 21 JBS slaughterhouses in five Amazon states: Acre, Mato Grosso, Para, Rondonia, and Tocantins.

AidEnvironment identified 3,329 direct suppliers and 9,247 indirect suppliers. Direct suppliers sell cattle to slaughterhouses, while indirect suppliers breed or raise them earlier in life. Transfers between farms can enable "cattle laundering," where animals from illegally deforested land are moved to compliant farms before slaughter. However, such transfers are also routine in production and do not automatically indicate wrongdoing.

JBS operates in more than 180 countries and reported $86.2 billion in revenue in 2025. The company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2025. It incorporated in the Netherlands and moved its headquarters from Sao Paulo to Amsterdam as part of that move.

Rabobank, one of the named Dutch banks, said its policy bars financing deforestation and accepting new clients whose land was illegally deforested since Jan. 1, 2018. Banco do Brasil said it complies with anti-money laundering rules and monitors environmental risks. ING and KPMG said they had not seen the complaint and could not comment on individual client relationships. Loyens & Loeff and Standard Chartered cited client confidentiality. BlackRock and Barclays declined to comment.

In October 2025, Rondonia's government rescinded a fine against JBS for trading cattle raised in a deforested protected area. The state attorney general said the fine relied on legislation no longer in force. JBS cited a 2023 audit by Brazil's Federal Prosecution Service that found 94% of its cattle purchases were from legal sources.