Prosecutor General Revokes Plea Bargain of Wesley Batista, Owner of Meat-Packing Giant JBS

02/27/2018 - 11h20

Brazil's Prosecutor General, Raquel Dodge, has decided to revoke plea-bargain agreements with Wesley Batista, one of the owners of JBS Corporation, and Francisco de Assis e Silva, Legal Director of the J&F holding company.

Dodge's decision, coming out of an administrative proceeding being held to analyze both cases, was made on the 16th and released on Monday (the 26th).

Last year, former General Prosecutor Rodrigo Janot had already revoked the agreements with Joesley Batista and Ricardo Saud, a former director of J&F. Both are being held under arrest.

The revoking of the agreements for all four depends on their ratification by Justice Edson Fachin, the case's rapporteur at the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

Revoking isn't the same thing as annulment. According to the Prosecutor General's Office (PGR), evidence obtained during the plea-bargain process can continue to be used in trials. The executives, however, lose their rights to the benefits that were awarded to them.

In the administrative proceeding, Dodge declared that all of the defendants - Joesley, Wesley, Saud and Silva - omitted information regarding the participation of former prosecutor Marcello Miller in the elaboration of the leniency agreement (corporate) and the plea-bargain agreements (executives) from JBS.

According to the PGR, messages from a WhatsApp group show that the executives had knowledge of Miller's situation, that he was working "both sides of the table" - that is, that he was a prosecutor for the Justice Ministry while at the same time serving as counsel for the group.

The PGR declared that the 'technical consulting' that Miller provided to the J&F executives likely earned him R$ 700,000 (US$ 217,000).

Translated by LLOYD HARDER

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	Nelson Antoine/Folhapress
	Wesley Batista, a partner in the JBS company, the world's largest animal protein processor