Brazilian prosecutors have formally administered charges on mostly former employees of meat processor BRF in connection with a criminal probe into falsifying records.
Eleven people were charged on Wednesday (4 December), according to court documents seen by news agency Reuters. In a reactive statement, BRF said ten of those people no longer work for the Brazilian firm and one has been put on leave as a consequence of the new developments.
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The charges reportedly revolve around evidence of falsification of documents and labels between 2012 and 2018, and adulteration of ingredients in nutritional additive products for livestock feed, Reuters said, citing claims filed by prosecutors in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná.
The case relates to a federal police investigation begun in 2018 known as Trapaça in Portuguese which translates to ‘trickery’, and was derived from another probe dubbed Carne Fraca, or ‘Weak Flesh’. The latter revolved around bribing government inspectors to overlook unsanitary conditions and practises, and implicated BRF and local peer JBS.
In October, BRF admitted its part in the Weak Flesh corruption scandal but said it was cooperating with authorities. The European Union banned 12 BRF plants from exporting meat to the EU last year, along with another eight owned by other Brazilian processors.
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In its statement issued overnight, BRF said the company is “collecting the details contained in the referred complaint”.
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By GlobalDataIt continued: “There are no current members of the administration, officers or executives in management positions of the company reported in the complaint. Among those 11 individuals, ten no longer work for BRF and the only employee that remains in the company has been preventively granted leave.
“The company reinforces its commitment to continue to develop its processes to guarantee the highest standards of integrity, quality and safety, cooperating with the authorities for the clarification of all the facts.
“The company will promptly inform its shareholders and the market in general regarding any new information related to the current announcement.”
Reuters reported the individuals named in the court documents, including two former vice-presidents for quality, stand accused of using banned substances and misrepresenting to regulators the amount of certain ingredients used to produce feed premix.
Prosecutors said that in most cases the substances added to the feed and to the premix by BRF’s employees were “potent antibiotics”, the use of which is normally restricted for the safety of consumers, the news agency continued.
“In order to ensure that wrongdoing was not detected, the accused acted deliberately to deceive federal auditors by committing other frauds, such as the removal of stocks of substances used in the manufacturing of the premix and the manipulation of samples,” the prosecutors said in the filing.
