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Circumventing Brazilian Law TIAA holdings in the vast northeastern Cerrado region of Brazil have more than doubled since 2012. Deemed one of the world’s twenty-five biodiversity hotspots and most threatened savannas, an estimated 40 to 50 percent of its vegetation is already destroyed while another 30 to 40 percent is degraded. Woodland is cleared at a rate local environmental groups call “alarming,” mostly for mechanized agricultural estates growing soy with large doses of pesticides. Hiparidi Top’Tiro, a leader of the Mobilization of Indigenous Peoples of the Cerrado told Cultural Survival: “Our lands are completely surrounded by huge agroindustry. They are poisoning our rivers and our children. They fly over our lands when they dust crops, dropping chemicals down onto us from the air.” TIAA began investing in Brazil in 2008 when it joined with sugar colossus Cosan to create Radar, a company 81 percent owned by TIAA. With the 2010 tightening of a Brazilian law limiting foreign ownership, other international investors backed out, but TIAA pushed ahead in acquiring land, sidestepping the law through minority partnerships with Brazilian-owned subsidiaries. TIAA and Cosan formed a new company, Tellus, with Cosan holding a 51 percent stake. TIAA also bought land through local businessman Euclides De Carli, who has been accused by a state deputy in neighboring Maranhão, Manoel Ribeiro, of illegally seizing over a million hectares. De Carli allegedly hired armed men to force local people to leave the land, and is accused of arranging the murders of two farmers who resisted. Brazilian researchers have described how once people are forced off the land, grileiros (land grabbers) like De Carli obtain titles through forged documents and bribes. “Euclides de Carli is one of the principal grileiros of Brazil’s agricultural frontier,” Lindonjonson Gonçalves de Sousa, a local prosecutor, told the New York Times. Conflicts between grileiros and the poor posseiros (homesteaders) in the Cerrado date back to the 1950s. In July 2016, the agrarian prosecutor in northeastern Piauí state voided 124,400 hectares of De Carli’s land titles, but TIAA has purchased other land from De Carli. “The significance of these canceled titles,” said Quinn-Thibodeau, “is that it increases the likelihood that the land that TIAA owns was bought illegally.” This places TIAA front and center in Brazil’s land conflicts. TIAA refutes the charges, even though its 2015 report on complying with Principles of Responsible Farmland Investment acknowledges that it helps to “facilitate the growth of local agribusinesses” in Brazil. The financial services giant insists that it almost always buys existing agricultural land rather than uncleared land, and that 100 percent of its purchases are subject to a rigorous title search. The difficulty with verifying these claims is that TIAA refuses to disclose the names and locations of the individual farms. Non-governmental critics insist that they must be made public to ensure adequate external evaluation. A 2015 report based on research by Brazilian campaign partner Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos argues that TIAA contributes to deforestation because it purchases already-cleared land that was obtained illegally by grileiros.