President of the Council decided to close the session and prevented a petition questioning the report of the process from being taken to the plenary
The ordinary session of the (Administrative Council for Economic Defense) this Wednesday (22.Oct.2025) ended with a fight between the president of the collegiate, and the counselor .
At the end of the session, Levi presented a petition from the (Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries) that contests the legitimacy of a change that would have been made unilaterally by Gustavo Augusto in the report on the soy moratorium process.
The document questioned the decision, which removed the report won by Levi and passed it on to the original rapporteur, the counselor .
Upon hearing the presentation of the order sent by Abiove to Levi, the president of Cade said that he would not include the discussion on the agenda and closed the session. Levi then protested, saying repeatedly that “the session was not closed”.
Before the broadcast is interrupted on Cade’s YouTube, the counselor says: “It’s not over, president. Are you going to take the ball and leave like a child? President has been defeated once again, please record unapproved minutes.”
Cade removed the video of the session from the air, but made the recording public again later in the afternoon.
Watch (3min57s):
According to Abiove’s petition, Cade’s president disrespected the Council’s internal regulations by altering the minutes of the trial held on September 30, when the body as a preventive measure the soybean moratorium from January 1, 2026. Read the do dispacho (PDF – 196 KB).
At the time, of the 6 members of Cade, only the original rapporteur, counselor Carlos Jacques, and the president were against maintaining the preventive measure. The disagreement was opened by José Levi Mello do Amaral Junior and accompanied by the other councilors.
According to the Council’s internal rules, the rapporteur should pass to Levi because the divergent majority was formed based on his vote, but, according to the Abiove order, Augusto monocratically decided to maintain the original rapporteur.
In the petition that was denied analysis, the association states that “the dispatch [que alterou a relatoria] of the President-in-Office of Cade is objectively null and void due to absolute incompetence, since it cannot override what has been decided, sovereignly, by the majority of the Cade Administrative Court”.
The document also says that Augusto would have changed the minutes of the September 30th trial unilaterally: “It appears that this Minute was monocratically rectified, perhaps due to a supposed material error, but, it should be noted, not in the point about the dissenting vote that became the driver of the majority formed and thus recognized in itself as approved, as well as by the respective rectified version”.
CADE AND SOY MORATORIUM
The competition authority decided on September 30 to maintain the of the soybean moratorium from January 2026. The agreement between soybean exporters will remain in force until December 31, 2025, the deadline for tradings can adapt to changes.
Created in 2006, the mechanism consists of a pact signed between traders, exporters, industries, environmental organizations and the federal government. The agreement prevents the purchase of grains grown in deforested areas of the Amazon after July 2008.
Although it does not have the force of law, the moratorium has consolidated itself as a mechanism for environmental self-regulation and has become a requirement for access to demanding markets, such as the European Union. The agreement before the current Forest Code came into force, which allows legal deforestation of up to 20% of the area on properties in the Amazon.
The investigation into the case was opened after representation from the Agriculture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies.
