Brazilian police break up illegal land speculation ring

By Kevin G. Hall

Knight Ridder Newspapers

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Federal police in Brazil said Friday they had broken up a ring of government officials whom they accuse of taking bribes from land speculators so they could grab Amazon rainforest land for illegal logging and soybean farming.

Federal prosecutor Gustavo Nogami told Knight Ridder authorities had captured or interviewed all 21 suspects sought in connection with writing illegal titles to lands near Santarem, Brazil, a deep-water Amazon port city where Minnesota-based Cargill opened a $20 million soybean-export terminal last year.

Eleven of the suspects who were arrested worked in the Para regional office of Incra, the much-maligned Brazilian agency that is charged with agriculture reform and distributing land and land titles to poor farmers.

“We will do everything possible to end this noncompliance with the law. We will clean this up,” Nogami said of the action, dubbed Operation Far West.

On Tuesday, police arrested Jose Roberto Faro, Incra’s chief in the eastern Amazon state of Para, Brazil’s second largest. Police allege he helped illegally convey more than 1.2 million acres not to poor farmers but to powerful landowners who had bribed him along with others in his office.

Knight Ridder spotlighted the area in a series of investigative reports in August and September, which documented an invasion of armed land squatters who were seizing land for speculators. The stories also described the use of illegal slave labor to clear jungle tracts.

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Nogami said land squatting was taking place to plant soybeans to sell to Cargill and other commodity traders. Cargill is among the investors that are paving a dirt road through the jungle to facilitate deliveries to Santarem.

“They (squatters) come because there is a Cargill terminal here. Being close lowers the costs. People come to Para, they take these public lands, devour the forest and plant soy,” Nogami said in a telephone interview from Santarem. “It is not the direct responsibility of Cargill.”

Jackson Pinto, an activist in the city of Belem, Brazil, with the Pastoral Land Commission, a social activist arm of the Roman Catholic Church, said Operation Far West aimed at just a tiny part of the Amazon’s huge problem of illegally grabbed land.

“Para is the second biggest state for illegal land taking, with 74 million acres, after the state of Amazonas, with almost 131 million acres,” he said.

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Faro’s arrest could mark the start of real action against illegal land activities in the Amazon. But it is also an embarrassment to the ruling Workers’ Party and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Faro is a member of the party and faces expulsion if he is convicted.

“The question of resolving land invasions is a question of political will,” Pinto said, adding that if Faro and associates are found to have taken more than $100,000 in bribes from soybean and logging interests as alleged, they must be severely punished.

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(c) 2004, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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ARCHIVE PHOTOS on KRT Direct (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): ENV-BRAZIL

ARCHIVE GRAPHIC on KRT Direct (from KRT Graphics, 202-383-6064): 20040812 BRAZIL AMAZON

AP-NY-12-10-04 1806EST

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