Brazil's Prosecutor General Opens Investigation and Threatens to Cancel JBS Plea-Bargain Agreement

09/05/2017 - 09h21

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REYNALDO TUROLLO JR.

LETÍCIA CASADO

FROM BRASÍLIA

In a press conference called without advance notice, Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot declared that he had decided to open up an investigation into evidence of omission of information regarding criminal practices in the agreement reached with JBS executives.

According to Janot, problems appeared last week when the JBS plea-bargainers turned new audio recordings over to the General Prosecutor's Office (PGR).

In one of them there is evidence of crimes committed by agents of the PGR and the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

The recording was made on the 17th of March, ten days after Joesley Batista had already recorded President Michel Temer at the Jaburu Palace and a few days before he signed a plea-bargain agreement with the PGR.

According to the PGR, the recording isn't one of the ones that was recovered from Batista's recorder by the Federal Police, but was spontaneously turned in by the plea-bargainers last week together with other material.

The agreement signed in May stipulated a timeframe of 180 days for JBS to turn over additional, complementary material - which expired last Thursday (the 31st).

"Audio recordings with gravely serious content were obtained on Thursday [the 31st]. An analysis of these recordings found conversations between the plea-bargainers with references to improprieties at the PGR and the Federal Supreme Court", Janot said.

The executives' defense team declared that "the hasty interpretation given to the material turned over by the executives to the PGR will be clarified as the recordings are more properly examined".

According to the company, the conversations cited by Janot contain "merely hypothetical cogitations - not one word whatsoever that compromises the authorities".

Translated by LLOYD HARDER

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