Panel SA: JBS owners seek a shortcut to review a billion dollar fine settled in 2017

J&F Investimentos, the parent company of meat giant JBS, is looking for a shortcut to drastically reduce the billion-dollar fine it negotiated with the Federal Public Ministry at the time brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista signed their plea bargain agreement, in 2017.

The company turned to the Institutional Council of the Public Ministry to overcome resistance found in other instances of the Judiciary and avoid paying the portion of the fine that expired at the beginning of the month. The judgment of the request in the organ is scheduled for this Tuesday (14).

Major shareholder of JBS and other Batista family businesses, J&F signed in 2017 a leniency agreement to cooperate with several ongoing corruption investigations and agreed to pay R$10.3 billion to get rid of stricter punishments.

The company asked for a review of the fine in September, arguing that the calculations of the Public Ministry adopted criteria contrary to the law, without considering the proportion of J&F’s shareholding in the group’s businesses, and claiming no damage to public coffers in the investigated crimes .

The company asks for the fine to be reduced to R$1.3 billion and proposes bringing forward the deadline for the settlement of the obligation, as a sign of good faith. The term provided for in the agreement in force is 25 years. J&F is committed to allocating another R$2.3 billion to projects in the social area.

The owners of JBS presented a technical note from the consultancy Tendências to support the new calculations, as well as legal opinions from the former minister of the Federal Supreme Court Francisco Rezek and the former attorney general of the Republic Aristides Junqueira.

The 5th Coordination Chamber of the Federal Public Ministry, which ratified the agreement signed in 2017, rejected the company’s requests, arguing that the matter should be dealt with in the first instance with the Federal District Attorney, which signed the leniency agreement.

J&F also appealed to the Federal Court. As the newspaper O Globo reported last week, judge Frederico Botelho de Barros Viana, of the 10th Federal District Court, rejected a request for suspension of the installment due this month and ordered J&F to deposit R$ 344 million in court.

In an appeal presented to the Institutional Council of the Public Ministry against the decision of the 5th Chamber, J&F lawyers ask that all obligations provided for in the agreement be suspended, including the installment whose payment the judge ordered to be made last week.

In addition to pointing out errors in the calculation of the fine, the company claims that it signed the agreement under pressure from banks and business partners, at a time when public opinion was demanding punishments for the company and the Batista brothers, and for that reason it agreed with the proposed amounts without discussion.

With Ricardo Balthazar (interim), Andressa Motter e Ana Paula White​.