Brazilian police on Wednesday arrested the chief executive officer of the world’s largest meatpacker for allegedly using his own plea bargain to gain an advantage in financial markets.
Wesley Batista was taken into custody in Sao Paulo.
Batista and his brother, Joesley, the former chairman of JBS SA, have both entered agreements with prosecutors in which they testified that JBS paid bribes to scores of politicians, including Brazilian President Michel Temer.
Temer denies wrongdoing.
The Batistas have been at the center of Brazil’s near-operatic corruption investigation in recent weeks — a drama outlined by the plea-bargain signing of many witnesses.
The sprawling probe has uncovered an alleged scheme in which several companies paid millions of US dollars in bribes to politicians.
The investigation, the largest in Brazil’s history, has implicated several former presidents.
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, for instance, has already been convicted of corruption in one case.
Da Silva arrived at a court in the southeastern city of Curitiba on Wednesday to testify in another.
Executives from JBS have provided evidence for some of the most serious allegations, including claims that Temer arranged to receive millions in payouts in exchange for helping the meatpacker.
However, prosecutors have questioned whether Joesley Bastista and other executives might have withheld some information, violating their plea deals.
Wednesday’s accusations focused on the company’s activity in the weeks before their plea deals became public.
Police investigator Victor Hugo Rodrigues Alves said the Batistas knew that the plea bargains would affect stock prices and cause the Brazilian real to weaken against the US dollar and used that to their advantage.
A warrant for Joesley Batista’s arrest was also issued, but the executive has been in custody since Sunday following the questions about his plea testimony.
Between late April and mid-May, while negotiating their plea bargains, the brothers made large purchases of US dollars on the futures markets, Rodrigues Alves said.
During that period, their holding company also sold hundreds of millions of US dollars in JBS shares.
“The victims are not just JBS shareholders,” Rodrigues Alves said. “In a large context, the country is a victim, as the crimes shook the confidence of the market.”
Over the course of about 10 days in May, as word began leaking that the brothers were considering plea bargains that included damning accusations, JBS shares plummeted, losing nearly half of their value.
Pierpaolo Cruz Bottini, a lawyer for the Batista brothers, called the arrest “unjust, absurd and regrettable.”
His clients had cooperated with authorities at every step, he said, adding that they were being targeted by some within the government for having reached plea bargains.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last