Lava Jato against JBS: Lula in the crosshairs again?

By Juca Simonard

JBS appears to be under scrutiny from European and North American governments. US President Joe Biden recently announced a protectionist plan that affects the Brazilian company's revenues, among other things; and European and American lawmakers have launched a campaign to investigate the meat processor, alleging corruption and environmental crimes.

The three parliamentarians who advocated for investigations are linked to the main political organizations of imperialism: Bob Menendez, from the Democratic Party, Biden's party; Ian Liddell-Grainger, from the British Conservative Party; and Norbert Lins, a Member of the European Parliament linked to the German Christian Democrats, Angela Merkel's party, and president of the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.

Biden has the right to pursue whatever economic policy he sees fit in the US. However, the international campaign for an investigation and boycott of JBS is noteworthy. This is especially true considering that the campaign by foreign parliamentarians was publicized just one day after the US president announced his new plan that directly affects not only JBS, but also another large Brazilian company in the sector: Marfrig. Both companies were mentioned. in research published on the White House website, for using their "market power to raise prices and pay farmers less, while taking more and more for themselves."

So, what's really at stake?

JBS is the world's largest meat processor and one of the most important in the US, and as such, it is bothering a sector of imperialism that wants to control this market. On January 4th, the Brazilian company acquired 100% of Rivalea, a leader in pig farming and processing in Australia. With this, JBS assumed leadership in pork processing in the country and increased its export power. Therefore, it is a company in rapid expansion. More than 70% of the company's revenue comes from meat sales in the United States—the same is true for Marfrig.

Unlike other publicly traded Brazilian companies, JBS continues to have two Brazilian businessmen, brothers Wesley and Joesley Batista, as its majority shareholders. They are the ones who effectively run it. The foreign parliamentarians who requested the investigation of JBS have expressed concern about this, claiming that both are under investigation for corruption.

Corruption: a pretext for the imperialist campaign.

Indeed, the Batista brothers were targeted by the Brazilian justice system during the period of the coup d'état. JBS was targeted by Operation Lava Jato. Wesley and Joesley were investigated by the Federal Police in 2016. They were accused of paying millions of reais in bribes to more than 1.800 politicians and public servants, in a broad scheme that also affected sectors of the right wing that Lava Jato wanted to remove from the political scene, such as Eduardo Cunha (MDB) and, for a time, Michel Temer (MDB).

In 2017, the businessmen reached a plea bargain agreement with the Attorney General's Office (PGR), made a leniency agreement with the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF), and agreements with US authorities, relinquishing approximately R$ 12,4 billion in their own assets. Just as with Odebrecht, Lava Jato used corruption to play politics in favor of the US. It weakened sectors of the coup itself, enriched US authorities, and blackmailed the businessmen to obtain plea bargains against members of the PT, such as former President Dilma Rousseff—who, however, was acquitted to save Temer and Aécio Neves (PSDB).

It was purely and simply a political operation that almost brought down Temer at a time when imperialism had lost confidence in his unpopular government; weakened the leadership of Aécio Neves and Cunha in the coup bloc—favoring the more pro-imperialist wing; continued the political persecution of the PT; and attempted to destroy JBS, just as they did with the Brazilian construction companies that were growing in the world market (Odebrecht, OAS, etc.).

It became clear during this operation that Lava Jato was a maneuver by imperialism not only to undermine workers' organizations, such as the PT, but also to weaken a sector of the national bourgeoisie in favor of the interests of foreign monopolies. It was only at this point that a sector of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), such as Gilmar Mendes, linked to national livestock groups, when they saw that their own interests were at risk, changed sides and began to criticize Lava Jato.

Temer remained in power, and the Batista brothers, despite being financially harmed, continued to control the company because a sector of the national bourgeoisie prevented the Lava Jato maneuvers and reached an agreement with imperialism.

Reduce competition and favor monopolies.

The coup d'état in Brazil made very clear the imperialist objective of using corruption or any other "ethical" pretext to bring down large companies in underdeveloped countries. Orchestrated by the US, Lava Jato not only bankrupted Brazilian construction companies but also initiated the process of destroying Petrobras to favor imperialist oil exploration monopolies. The central motive of the coup was to halt the economic development resulting from the nationalist policies of the Lula and Dilma governments, as well as, of course, to destroy democratic and labor rights to favor exploitation in the country.

To achieve this goal, however, corruption is only one of the pretexts that can be used. Foreign parliamentarians demanding investigations against JBS, for example, not only allege that Wesley and Joesley are corrupt, but also point out that the company commits environmental crimes.

In a joint statement, lawmakers called for governments to investigate the business practices of the Brazilian company JBS, as well as the holding company J&F Investimentos, owned by the Batista brothers, and its subsidiaries in the US and Europe. Allegedly concerned about the Amazon rainforest, they claim that JBS obtains cattle "from farms that contribute to deforestation." The company has been accused of using beef from cows grazing in illegally deforested areas.

In this regard, in December 2021, six European supermarket chains, such as Carrefour (controlled by a group of French businessmen), announced that they had stopped buying meat from Brazil because of the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. According to RFI, The European Union hopes to approve legislation in 2022 against the purchase of products from deforestation., taking advantage of the popularity of the environmental agenda.

The policy of using supposedly ethical pretexts to advance economic interests is a global strategy of imperialism. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin recently denounced that the US has been coercing companies not to buy cotton from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. — where imperialism claims there is a disregard for so-called "Human Rights".

In this sense, the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has been constantly harassed by the US government. Executive Meng Wanzhou, at the behest of the US, was imprisoned for more than three years in Canada, accused of bank and electronic fraud. In 2018, she was indicted, along with Huawei, for lying to banks about the company's links to Iran, which the Americans considered a violation of the sanctions they unilaterally imposed on the country. In 2020, the Chinese company was accused of organized crime for stealing secrets about stock market trading.

Biden Plan

Another facet of the same policy appears in Joe Biden's new plan to lower meat prices in the country. In 2021, over a 12-month period, the index for meat, poultry, fish, and eggs in the US increased by 12,8%, with the index for beef growing by 20,9%. Therefore, Biden launched a $1 billion plan to incentivize production by small producers, as a way to combat market concentration, with JBS and Marfrig as the main targets.

The program is legitimate (unlike the traditional dirty tricks) and actually reveals the failure of neoliberal politics. Faced with the country's economic crisis, Biden is seeking a palliative measure. A timid attempt to prevent a social explosion caused by inflation. Thus, he kills two birds with one stone, since it also tends to reduce the control of the meat market by Brazilian companies. Therefore, When Joe Biden's administration launched its offensive against the sector, JBS shares plummeted 4,22%..

Continuation of the coup-mongering policy

The international Lava Jato investigation against JBS reveals that the US has not abandoned its scorched-earth policy towards Brazil. On the contrary, it tends to intensify under Joe Biden, who, in one year of government, has carried out more political attacks against Latin American countries, such as Cuba and Nicaragua, than his predecessor, Donald Trump. Biden is once again showing himself to be a hardliner of imperialism, and is entering a crisis of great consequences with Russia and China to maintain the interests of American monopolies.

In Brazil, the goal is to completely subdue the economy to imperialism. This is the policy of the coup, from Temer to Jair Bolsonaro. The privatization of Petrobras' distribution companies and refineries, and other national public assets, are part of this project. With JBS—just as it was with Odebrecht—imperialism finds an easy target; after all, who will vouch for a large, highly corrupt company that exploits labor? 

The motives, however, must be denounced: this is not about fighting corruption or defending the Amazon rainforest, but rather a political operation to destroy the national economy. The imperialist machinations must be denounced, and the solution to JBS's problems (whose main issues, such as the high exploitation of labor, are not mentioned by imperialism) should be the complete nationalization of the company under workers' control. Otherwise, it will simply be replaced by foreign monopolies.

Furthermore, it is necessary to raise the suspicion that they will use Lava Jato against JBS to target the PT (Workers' Party). As mentioned, in the agreement with the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in 2017, the company made a plea bargain against several PT politicians, such as former ministers Guido Mantega and Antônio Palocci; former governors Fernando Pimentel and Zeca do PT; and former president Dilma. It was during the PT governments that the company grew, and it is known that, to prevent Lula's victory in this year's elections, imperialism, with the support of the national press, will play dirty against the former president.