Brazil Country Profile

Environment, Natural Resources and Extractive Industry

Business Corruption

Despite federal government declarations about saving the rain forest, illegal logging in the Amazon remains a major problem and causes deforestation of large areas of pristine forest. In a major crackdown in 2005, nearly 90 public officials, businessmen and loggers were arrested. Environmental protection agency (IBAMA) (in Portuguese) employees in charge of protecting the forests from illegal loggers had been accepting bribes from logging companies in return for falsifying permits to transport timber to markets within Brazil and abroad. The illegal logging takes place primarily in Mato Grosso, where environmental organisations estimate that two-thirds of all logging was being carried out illegally.

Brazilian federal police arrested three executives of the state-owned oil company Petrobras and directors of three shipyard companies (Angraporto Offshore, Maua Jurong and IESA) in 2004, following allegations of insider information and ghost companies slicing up lucrative contracts from Petrobras. It was reported that the arrested executives and directors had fixed bids for contracts totalling USD 79 million to repair three oil platforms.

Political Corruption

Corruption inside the environmental inspection agency IBAMA is reported to be a major obstacle in the effort to curb illegal logging in the Amazon. IBAMA has been reorganised in an attempt to eliminate corruption, but it is too early to evaluate the impact of this measure.

In early 2007, Dutch primatologist Marc van Roosmalen was jailed following accusations that he kept orphaned monkeys in a refuge at his home in the Amazon without the appropriate permits. According to The Independent, bribes from the timber and soya industries are believed to have led to his arrest and conviction because of his widely acknowledged work to protect the Amazon forest.