Study identifies 142 agribusiness entrepreneurs involved in attempted fraud.

By Alceu Luís Castilho and Bruno Stankevicius Bassi, Keeping an Eye on Ruralists - These questions have lingered since November 21, 2024, when the Federal Police (PF) indicted the former president and 36 others for attempted coup d'état. The report published that day revealed the existence of the Green and Yellow Dagger plan: a murder plot orchestrated by members of the Armed Forces and high-ranking government officials. The objective? To establish a state of emergency and assassinate the president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his vice-president Geraldo Alckmin, and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

The agribusiness sector's involvement in the plan was detailed after the arrest of Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro's former aide-de-camp. In testimony to the Attorney General's Office, he claims to have received approximately R$ 100 in cash. The bills were delivered in a wine bag by General Walter Braga Netto, who told Cid about the origin of the money: "General Braga Netto handed it over and commented that it was someone from agribusiness who had given it, but I don't know the name of the person who gave it to him."

Who are these faceless, nameless, and unpunished "agribusiness people"?

To answer this question, De Olho nos Ruralistas launches this Wednesday (25) the report “Agricultural scammerswhich identifies 142 businesspeople in the sector who provided logistical or financial support to coup attempts between the second half of 2022 and the fateful day of January 8, 2023.

The agricultural coup plotters are not just caricatured farmers with wide-brimmed hats and boots in the backwoods of the country. Throughout 89 pages, it is possible to find the names of banks and multinational corporations directly linked to the businessmen who financed the terror. They receive funding from institutions such as Santander, Rabobank, and John Deere. And they have supply contracts and partnerships with giants like BTG Pactual and Syngenta—the latter being part of the financing chain of the Parliamentary Agricultural Front (FPA).

The most alarming fact concerns accountability: except for those (few) who were caught in the act of terrorism on January 8th, none of the individuals named have been held legally responsible for inciting the coup d'état.

The observatory analyzed 1.452 names to establish a connection with agribusiness.

For four months, the observatory's research team reviewed lists of individuals and legal entities investigated for contracting infrastructure for coup plotters—generators, tents, portable toilets, food—and for enabling the blocking of highways from north to south of the country.

The database of financiers of anti-democratic acts — 551 names in total — was supplemented by the list of 898 defendants held criminally responsible in Supreme Court investigations related to January 8th and by the list of those indicted in Operation Lesa Pátria, by the Federal Police. Finally, we included in the analysis the names of three ranchers from Pará investigated for providing support to the terrorists George Washington de Oliveira Sousa and Alan Diego dos Santos Rodrigues, responsible for the attempted bombing at Brasília airport on Christmas Eve 2022.

Based on this data, our team sought to identify direct links to agribusiness: ownership of rural properties registered with the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra) or the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR); partnerships in agricultural companies registered with the Federal Revenue Service; and the registration of beneficiaries of rural insurance by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply. In the case of the indicted private companies, the research was extended to their partners.

In total, we found that 142 farmers and agribusiness entrepreneurs were implicated for their participation in anti-democratic acts.

They represent 10% of all names analyzed throughout the research. This data may — and probably is — underestimated, since cases of individuals with homonyms are common and, due to the General Data Protection Law, both the land databases of Incra and those of the Federal Revenue Service no longer display the CPF number.

This report only lists cases where there was absolute confirmation of a link to agribusiness.

"SOYBEAN ARC" CONCENTRATES 71% OF AGRICULTURAL FRAUDSTERS

Of the 142 farmers and business partners identified in the survey, 74 are based in Mato Grosso, 17 in Goiás, and 13 in Bahia. These three states account for 71% of the names compiled by the observatory. The connection to agribusiness is clear: together, they comprise the main soybean production corridor in the country, responsible for 47% of the national harvest.

It was precisely from this axis that most of the trucks identified by the Public Security Secretariat of the Federal District (SSP-DF) among the vehicles parked in front of the Army Headquarters (QG) in Brasília came: 56 of the 234 trucks sent to the coup camp originated in Sorriso (MT), the largest soybean producing center in the world.

Of that total, 28 belong to two interconnected families. With ten names on the list, the Bedin clan sent fifteen trucks to the federal capital. United to the Bedin family through business and marriage, the Lermen family sent thirteen vehicles to the coup plotters' headquarters.

The group is led by pioneer Argino Bedin, the "father of soy" in Sorriso. The same businessman who remained silent before the Joint Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPMI) on January 8th in the Senate. When he returned to Sorriso, four days after his testimony, Argino was cheered at a gala event organized by politicians and leading figures in Mato Grosso's agribusiness.

The path linking the Soybean Arc to the coup movements also passes through agribusiness representative organizations: six businessmen investigated in proceedings related to January 8th and the coup-supporting encampments are leaders of the Brazilian Association of Soybean Producers (Aprosoja), one of the founding organizations of the Instituto Pensar Agro (IPA), the logistical arm of the rural caucus in Congress.

Among them is Christiano da Silva Bortolotto, former president of Aprosoja of Mato Grosso do Sul and of the Rural Union of Amambai (MS), where he is at the center of a historical conflict against the Guarani-Kaiowá people of Tekohá Kurusu Ambá.

The themes of the report will be explored in a series of news articles.

None of the farmers suspected of financing the coup attempts were arrested or convicted for that reason. Those indicted by parliamentary commissions of inquiry—both in the Senate and the Legislative Chamber of the Federal District—are not included in the indictment by the Attorney General's Office (PGR) that defined the six coup plotter groups in the Supreme Court trial. Nor were the businessmen listed in the list of owners of the trucks found at the Army Headquarters, released by the SSP-DF (Secretariat of Public Security of the Federal District), prosecuted.

Even with Mauro Cid's statement pointing to "the agribusiness people" as responsible for financing the Green and Yellow Dagger plan. Even though messages intercepted by the Federal Police prove that the organizers of the encampment urged Jair Bolsonaro to go beyond the bounds of the Constitution.

Impunity is one of the central factors highlighted by the report."Agro-coup plotters"The business sector that financed the Bolsonaro project has so far emerged unscathed and with a clean image. Little by little, it is becoming invisible. As if only military plots had been the decisive factors for the institutional violence. The fingerprints of agribusiness in the machinery of the coup could be observed since 2022. De Olho nos Ruralistas revealed the tip of the iceberg in a dossier entitled “The Agrarian Origins of Terror"— published just four months after the terrorist acts of January 8, 2023. At the time, the survey identified the agrarian connections of 44 businessmen and politicians who were involved in organizing the vandalism in Praça dos Três Poderes, in Brasília, and the road blockades in five states."

Two years later, little progress has been made in holding those who financed the coup in Brazil accountable.