Brazil's MPF launches probes into illegal mining financing in Roraima and Pantanal projects
The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) in Brazil has charged a group led by a Boa Vista businessman with financing illegal gold mining in the Yanomami Indigenous territory of Roraima and laundering roughly R$64 million through shell companies and cash transactions. Six people face accusations of organized crime, money laundering and usurpation of Union assets, with prosecutors describing a scheme that funded clandestine mining operations, moved funds across multiple accounts and used falsified companies.
In a separate investigation, the MPF opened an inquiry into a R$3.7 billion loan from the state development bank BNDES to LHG Logística, a company of the J&F Group owned by brothers Wesley and Joesley Batista. The financing is intended to build 400 barges and 15 pushers for transporting manganese ore from Corumbá in Mato Grosso do Sul to a maritime terminal in Uruguay. Prosecutors say the project proceeded without sufficient environmental impact studies for the Pantanal biome and may violate environmental regulations.