A federal judge in Brasília ordered the recalculation of the da fine, due to “excessive burden”, and understood that the Wesley brothers’ company suffered coercion when closing an agreement with the Federal Government for this amount in 2017.
There is still no prediction from the Court of the new amounts to be paid by J&F, but the company estimates that it will fall to R$1 billion. The decision may be appealed.
The decision was taken on Saturday (1st) by magistrate Antonio Claudio Macedo da Silva, from the 10th Federal Criminal Court of the DF.
It determines that the original sanction be annulled and that the clause determining the fine be recalculated after full deduction of all amounts paid by the company to the United States Department of Justice due to the same facts.
It also states that the limitation of the calculation basis must be exclusively related to J&F’s activities, revenues and contracts under Brazilian jurisdiction and “directly related to the illicit activities covered by the agreement”.
A leniency agreement is a type of plea bargain by a company, in which it points out irregularities that were committed and agrees to pay a fine in exchange for benefits in court.
In a note, J&F says that the recalculation “undoes an injustice, by recognizing J&F’s lack of voluntariness in its signature and the blemish on the calculation and its legality”.
“Considering the calculations carried out by the MPF based on the law, J&F estimates that the corrected value of the fine is around R$1 billion, despite Operation Spoofing [que investigou responsáveis pela invasão hacker a aparelhos de integrantes da Lava Jato] revealed that the correct value of the fine would be R$595 million”, says the company.
The action to review the leniency agreement was filed by J&F itself against the Federal Public Ministry, which signed the leniency agreement with the company in 2017.
J&F asked for the values to be reviewed, in addition to calculating the fine. The company’s defense argued that the R$10.3 billion fine was established under duress and illegally, and that this would violate the calculation methodology provided for in the anti-corruption law and in a presidential decree in force at the time.
According to the company, the Public Ministry’s criteria were arbitrary, because they included J&F’s global revenue and a “hybrid fine”, which penalized the company even without the state recognizing any damage to the treasury.
“The negotiation [do acordo] was conducted in an environment of systemic legal uncertainty that enhanced the bargaining power of the ministerial body and created the conditions for coercion”, says the judge in his decision.
“The conduct attributed to the Public Prosecutor’s Office deviates from the standards of legality and good faith required in a democratic State of Law”, he adds.
In the decision, the judge orders the Federal Public Ministry and the prosecution assistants, Petros and Funcef, to pay procedural costs and legal fees.
A Sheet He contacted the Federal Public Ministry and is awaiting a response.
The company has been trying to recalculate the values of its leniency agreement in recent years.
Having reached an agreement only with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and not with the (Comptroller General of the Union), J&F made agreements with construction companies involved in the scandals revealed by the minister, of the (Supreme Federal Court).
One of his attempts at recalculation was the negotiation of a new leniency agreement with the CGU itself, which was interrupted at the beginning of this year.
At the end of 2023, the STF minister gave a decision that benefited the company and suspended payment of the R$10.3 billion fine in the leniency agreement.
In the same decision, Toffoli to have access to the full messages from Operation Spoofing, which includes conversations between Lava Jato prosecutors.
In response to Toffoli’s decision, minister André Mendonça opened a negotiation table at the beginning of 2024 between the construction companies that signed leniency agreements and the Union.
Only companies that signed leniency with the (Attorney General of the Union) and the CGU, federal government bodies, which was not the case with J&F.
