By Salma El-Sakka
A coalition of environmental and human rights advocacy groups has filed 14 legal complaints with European financial regulators and prosecutors against JBS, the world’s largest meat company, accusing it and its financial partners of facilitating money laundering linked to alleged illegal deforestation in the Amazon.
Complaints target European financial institutions
The filings, submitted Wednesday, name JBS along with its banks, investment managers and advisers. Complaints were lodged with financial regulators in Britain, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as Britain’s National Crime Agency and Dutch bodies overseeing financial and legal professionals. A separate criminal referral against JBS’s Dutch parent company was filed with Dutch prosecutors.
The coalition, known as the Transnational Legal Coalition (TLC), aims to prompt investigations and put financiers and advisers on notice about potential legal consequences of deforestation in JBS’s supply chain. “Illegal deforestation of the Amazon is a crime, not a business model,” said Bláithín Quigley, TLC coordinator.
JBS denies allegations, cites monitoring system
JBS said it had not received the data or methodology behind the allegations, preventing independent evaluation. The company stated that since 2010 it has monitored cattle suppliers in the Amazon using satellite imagery and geo-referencing, assessing each transaction against criteria set by Brazil’s Federal Prosecution Office. The system analyzes more than 600,000 square kilometers daily and automatically blocks farms with illegal deforestation, embargoed areas, overlap with Indigenous lands, quilombola territories, conservation units, or slave-like labor.
Coalition uses anti-money laundering laws
The legal rationale for bringing cases before European authorities rests on JBS’s ties to financial institutions in Europe, not on European beef consumption. Around 70% of Brazilian beef is consumed domestically; Europe accounts for 18.8% of exports. The complaints allege that JBS uses revenue from sales of cattle raised on illegally cleared land to pay EU-based financiers and advisers, triggering obligations under anti-money laundering laws.
Targeted institutions include Barclays, Standard Chartered, the London branches of Bank of Montreal and Banco do Brasil, Dutch banks Rabobank and ING, BlackRock Asset Management in Ireland and Germany, and JBS’s legal, accounting and auditing advisers in the Netherlands: Loyens & Loeff, EY and KPMG. Most declined to comment or cited client confidentiality; Rabobank said its policy bars financing deforestation.
Research basis for complaints
The complaints draw on research by nonprofit AidEnvironment, which used Brazil’s mandatory animal health and movement records to identify farms linked to cattle purchased by JBS slaughterhouses, cross-referencing them with official deforestation maps. The analysis covered 21 JBS slaughterhouses across five Amazon-region states, identifying 3,329 direct suppliers and 9,247 indirect suppliers. Transfers between farms can enable “cattle laundering,” concealing origins of animals raised on illegally deforested land.
Previous legal issues in Brazil
JBS has faced legal complaints in Brazil over illegal deforestation. In October 2025, Rondonia’s government rescinded a fine against JBS for trading cattle raised in a deforested protected area after the state attorney general said the fine relied on legislation no longer in force. A 2023 audit by Brazil’s Federal Prosecution Service found 94% of JBS cattle purchases were from legal sources, and the company said it was working toward 100% compliance.
