Date of case: September 2023

Transparency International's research indicates that the violation of land rights and accompanying deforestation in the northeast of Brazil shows links to corruption. The region is a new frontier for cash crops such as soybeans and cotton. Aggressive agricultural expansion has led to conflict, land grabbing, and deforestation, which drives carbon emissions. Two whistleblowers who reported on the same land grab were killed in 2014 and 2021. The land grab in question is found in the state of West Bahia, in the Northeastern part of the country, and it involved approximately 366,000 hectares of land—an area greater than the country of Luxembourg—. Land grabbers took advantage of overlapping ownership claims to claim ownership over the area. To consolidate their claim, they bribed judges and lawyers to confirm the ownership. As a result, an estimated US$ 240 million in illicit financial flows was generated by the corrupt scheme. Around 200 farmers were blackmailed to pay extortion fees to avoid eviction, and deforestation spiked following the confirmation of ownership by the courts.