A U.S. listing for the world’s biggest meatpacker, which the company has sought since 2009, comes as the brothers, now back on the board of JBS, have also recovered much of their vaunted influence among Brazil’s political elite.

Their prominence was on display on Saturday when Wesley Batista, fresh off a trip to Paris with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, took the stage to discuss the economic outlook with Brazil’s central bank chief and senior bankers.

‘They’re back because they’re investing’

Batista was in good spirits, pushing back against some of the criticism that Brazilian business leaders have leveled against Lula’s leftist government.

“We need to look at what’s working too, because everyone here is making investment plans and growing,” he told the beachside gathering in Sao Paulo state, drawing applause.

Few business leaders can match the brothers’ access in the capital Brasilia. Lula’s public agenda shows that one or both have appeared alongside the president during at least five public events since last year.

They have also held several private meetings with Lula and his ministers, two people with knowledge of the cabinet’s private schedules said.

JBS said its meetings with public officials adhere to its code of conduct. The presidential press office did not respond to questions about the meetings.

It is a far cry from the brothers’ nadir nearly a decade ago, when they confessed to bribing hundreds of politicians, stepped away from their corporate empire and spent months in jail fighting insider trading allegations.

“They’re back because they’re investing,” said a person close to Brazil’s presidency.

Growing global influence

JBS operates hundreds of meatpacking plants across more than 20 countries, rivaling Tyson Foods in the U.S. beef market and ranking among Brazil’s biggest companies by revenue and employment. The Batistas’ parent company, J&F, has expanded across the Brazilian economy into banking, energy and logistics.

A $5 million donation by JBS subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee underscored the growing global reach of their influence.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren grilled JBS in a public letter last month, suggesting the donation and subsequent approval of the U.S. listing by the Securities Exchange Commission within months “raise serious concerns about a potential quid-pro-quo arrangement.”

In response to questions about the donation, JBS said that Pilgrim’s “has a long bipartisan history of participating in the civic process.”

Operation Car Wash

The brothers’ rehabilitation extends beyond politics.

After years embroiled in Brazil’s biggest-ever corruption scandal, Operation Car Wash, J&F has secured a court order suspending a $2 billion fine for its role in the scheme.

At the height of the scandal, the brothers admitted to bribing some 1,800 politicians. In 2017, Joesley Batista recorded a conversation allegedly discussing a bribery scheme with then-President Michel Temer as part of a plea bargain deal.

The Batista brothers, who stepped away from JBS leadership positions during stretches of the scandal, were later arrested for alleged insider trading based on that sealed plea deal. They were later acquitted in the case.

In 2023, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice suspended the fine against J&F in their plea deal, accepting the argument that prosecutors were biased at the time. The case awaits wider review by the court.

“The conflicts of the past were well handled in a conciliatory way,” said Fabio Medina Osorio, Brazil’s solicitor general during the Temer administration.

The post Brazil beef barons’ Wall Street listing caps a return from exile appeared first on Farmtario.

Prosecutors are calling for the mandatory introduction of a transponder equipment to monitor such planes, and have suggested new regulations are enforced by the end of this year. In an official communication sent to the civil aviation agency earlier this month, they have asked Anac, as the entity is known, to treat the matter as a priority.

“The agriculture aircraft is the ideal means of transportation for bringing in guns, drugs and illegal agro-chemicals from places like Paraguay,” prosecutor Marco Antonio de Almeida said. “There has to be increased oversight.”

Anac said the agency is pondering the impact of potential changes to agriculture aviation rules, but no decision on a new monitoring system has been made yet.

The use of crop dusters is rising at a rate of three per cent per year, according to Sindag, a syndicate that represents agriculture aviation firms operating in Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of commodities such as soybeans, coffee, sugar and orange juice.

Sindag said last year such airplanes sprayed an area corresponding to 178 million acres, a region almost as large as Chile, in multiple applications. Crop dusters are widely used by cotton, sugarcane, rice and soy growers, according to industry data.

There are 2,131 registered agriculture airplanes in Brazil, according to Anac.

Sindag says 70 per cent of that fleet is based in the states of Mato Grosso, Rio Grande do Sul, Sao Paulo and Goias, according data from December. About two-thirds of the fleet belongs to service providers while the remainder is privately owned, Sindag says.

Almeida said prosecutors defend use of the transponder equipment on crop dusters, which fly at low altitudes and without any form of communication with flight controllers.

But he said agriculture aviation companies are against the use of the transponder, which they claim raises cost.

Gabriel Colli, a Sindag director, said use of the transponder equipment would require certification and inspections by Anac, a process that could be time-consuming.

Colli said it would be more effective using a locator device known as DGPS, which is already built in and could perform communications with a control tower, emulating the system used in commercial aviation.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ricardo Brito; writing by Ana Mano.

The post Brazil cracking down on unmonitored agriculture planes appeared first on Farmtario.

Joesley Batista, who steered JBS from a Brazilian beef processing firm to a global food conglomerate with major U.S. operations, was expected to be released later on Friday from a Sao Paulo detention center, said his lawyer, Andre Callegari.

Batista and his brother, Wesley, were arrested last year on charges of obstruction of justice and insider trading following a controversial plea bargain related to a corruption scandal that threatened to topple President Michel Temer.

Wesley Batista, the former chief executive of JBS, was released last month. The brothers cannot leave the country while they answer to charges against them. The Batistas control JBS through holding company J+F Investimentos.

The judge who ordered Joesley Batista’s release said the reason for his preventive arrest order was no longer valid, since that type of arrest by law should not exceed 120 days. The former JBS chairman had been behind bars for the last six months.

The Batistas’ testimony was central to charges presented by Brazil’s prosecutor general against Temer. In a plea deal, they accused Temer of taking bribes in return for political favours and of conspiring to buy the silence of a witness who could implicate the president.

Temer denied any wrongdoing, and Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted against sending the charges to the Supreme Court.

Joesley was later accused of withholding key information from the plea deal, triggering allegations of obstructing justice that led to his arrest.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ricardo Brito; writing by Marcelo Teixeira.

The post Ex-JBS chairman released from jail appeared first on Farmtario.

The settlement means that Brazil’s three-year sweeping graft investigations have now led to the world’s two biggest leniency fines ever levied.

J+F’s penalty surpasses the 8.5 billion reais that Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht agreed to pay for its role in the political graft scandal convulsing Latin America’s biggest economy, prosecutors said in statement late Tuesday.

“The payments will be made exclusively by the holding company and should start in December 2017,” prosecutors said in their statement, adding that J+F will have 25 years to make the payments.

J+F was able to reduce the final value by 900 million reais from the initial 11.2 billion proposed by Brazilian prosecutors. J+F’s three previous proposals were rejected and the company replaced its lawyers earlier on Tuesday.

J+F confirmed the terms of the leniency agreement and said in an emailed statement that the fine is being paid by the holding, to protect JBS’ minority shareholders. In a securities filing, JBS said the fines settle charges of two corruption probes involving the company.

State witness testimony from J+F’s owners Joesley and Wesley Batista that they spent 600 million reais to bribe nearly 1,900 politicians in recent years deepened Brazil’s political crisis that threatens to topple president Michel Temer.

Joesley Batista is at the center of a corruption investigation into Temer, after secretly recording a conversation in which the president appeared to condone bribing a potential witness. Other JBS executives in plea-bargain testimony accused Temer of taking nearly US$5 million in bribes from the company in recent years.

The JBS testimony was the most damaging yet to Brazil’s political class, hitting virtually all major figures past and present. It included allegations that former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff received US$80 million in bribes in offshore accounts.

Rousseff was impeached last year on breaking budgetary laws and Temer, her vice-president, took over. Rousseff and her supporters say she was the victim of a “coup” orchestrated by Temer and his allies as they sought to take power and halt the corruption investigations.

Temer, Lula and Rousseff have all denied wrongdoing, with Temer defiantly rebuffing calls to resign.

Joesley Batista resigned last week as chairman of JBS and left the board, while his brother Wesley resigned as vice-chairman of the JBS board, though he retained a board seat and is still the firm’s CEO.

Falling fortunes

JBS shares have slid more than 28 per cent this month in extremely turbulent trading because of concern that blowback from the scandal could limit its funding options.

Common shares in JBS rose eight per cent on Wednesday morning to eight reais as investors bet the meatpacker may be forced to hand out extra dividends to help its controlling shareholder pay the fine.

Traders warned, however, that the stock is likely to remain volatile as further probes involving tax issues, suspected irregularities on past acquisitions and financial market transactions develop.

Most of the fine J+F will pay, or eight billion reais, will be divided among Brazil’s development bank BNDES, FGTS workers’ severance fund, two pension funds for employees of state-controlled companies and lender Caixa Economica Federal.

Pension funds and state-run banks invested in or extended loans to J+F companies in return for bribes paid by the Batista brothers, according to plea-deal testimony.

Prosecutors said in the statement the fine is equivalent to 5.6 per cent of the group companies’ revenue. Investors in JBS shares have been closely watching the plea negotiations.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ricardo Brito in Brasilia and Tatiana Bautzer in Sao Paulo; additional reporting by Brad Brooks and Bruno Federowski in Sao Paulo.

The post JBS parent to pay record fine in leniency deal appeared first on Farmtario.