A coalition of legal and environmental groups has filed money laundering complaints against JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, and 12 financial institutions, investors and advisers, including the U.K. bank Barclays. The complaints allegedly tie JBS profits to illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The Transnational Legal Coalition filed 14 complaints with prosecutors and financial regulators in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands on Nov. 5. It argues that profits from cattle raised on illegally cleared land constitute “proceeds of crime” under anti-money laundering laws, potentially exposing JBS, and institutions that handle its money, to legal liability. “Illegal deforestation of the Amazon is a crime, not a business model,” Bláithín Quigley, coordinator for the Transnational Legal Coalition, said in a statement. The coalition of legal nonprofits includes Global Legal Action Network and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, as well as advocacy groups Mighty Earth, FIND and King’s College London in the U.K. The complaints draw on a report by environmental research nonprofit AidEnvironment that linked JBS suppliers to more than 6.5 million hectares (16 million acres) of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 1988 and 2026. Barclays is JBS’s largest financier and earned $1.7 billion from its dealings with the company between 2018 and 2023, according to a 2024 investigation by Global Witness. An analysis by the Center for Climate Crime Analysis for the same investigation found nearly 8,000 cows reared on illegally occupied Apyterewa Indigenous territory in Pará “entered JBS’s supply chain” in the same…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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