Brazil police raid Amazon carbon credit projects exposed by Mongabay

On June 5, the Brazilian Federal Police launched a raid targeting the proponents of some of the largest carbon credit projects in the Brazilian Amazon. The Greenwashing Operation focuses on the group of Ricardo Stoppe, cited in late May in a Mongabay investigation for its links with an alleged illegal timber scam. In the country’s largest investigation ever done on this matter, authorities found that the group had installed projects in land-grabbed areas, making 180 million reais ($34 million) from the selling of “rotten” carbon credits.

Stoppe owns five REDD+ projects in the Brazilian Amazon, covering 400,000 hectares (nearly 1 million acres), more than five times the size of New York City. REDD+ stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and carbon credits are generated by protecting an area that could otherwise be deforested.

The Federal Police targeted the same three projects investigated by Mongabay: Fortaleza Ituxi, Unitor and Evergreen, located in the municipalities of Lábrea and Apuí, in the south of Amazonas state. Among the buyers of these credits are companies such as the carbon credit broker Moss, the Brazilian low-cost carrier GOL Airlines, the food delivery app iFood, Itaú, one of the country’s leading banks, and the international companies Toshiba, Spotify and Boeing.

The Federal Police echoed Mongabay’s findings that the group was using these areas not only to generate carbon credits but also to issue fake documents to launder timber taken from illegally deforested areas.

In Brazil, all timber must be accompanied by a document called a DOF, the Forest Origin Document, also known as a timber credit. Once environmental authorities approve a forest management plan, its owner can issue a certain number of DOFs, corresponding to the volume of trees allowed to be extracted from that area.

In Stoppe’s case, however, an analysis found that the forest management plans inside his REDD+ projects didn’t extract all the wood they could, according to the Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA). The nonprofit, a Netherlands-based organization founded by prosecutors and investigators that investigates emitters of climate-warming greenhouse gases, used satellite images to compare the volume of timber taken from Stoppe’s areas and the volume declared through the DOF system.

CCCA found mismatches equivalent to more than 4,200 truckloads of wood. Mongabay’s investigation revealed evidence reviewed by experts that those mismatches indicated that Stoppe’s projects could be using the spare credits to launder the timber illegally taken from other areas.

According to the Federal Police, the false timber credits were probably used to launder timber extracted by Stoppe’s own group and by Chaules Pozzebon group, considered one of the Amazon’s largest deforester, who was sentenced to 70 years in prison.  Two men targeted by the investigators are loggers: José Luiz Capelasso and Élcio Aparecido Moço. According to the authorities, the group is behind the illegal extraction of more than 1 million cubic meters of wood, the equivalent of almost 5,000 truckloads.

“They were certainly using the paper to launder wood,” federal deputy Thiago Marrese Scarpellini, chief Greenwashing Operation investigator, told Mongabay by phone. “Near their logging companies, there is the Kaxarari Indigenous land, and there is always wood being taken from there.”

The Federal Police served 76 arrest and search and seizure warrants in the states of Rondônia, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Paraná, Ceará and São Paulo. They seized two airplanes, luxury cars and, several pieces of jewelry.

Moço and Capelasso were arrested, as well as Stoppe’s son, Ricardo Villares Lot Stoppe, and Capelasso’s daughter, the forest engineer Poliana, who signed the likely fraudulent forest management plans used by the group. After spending two days on the run, Ricardo Stoppe turned himself in to the police on Jun. 7.

In a statement sent to Mongabay, Grupo Ituxi, the company behind the projects, informed it would make a public statement after having access to the Federal Police investigation files.

Land grabbing 2.0

The Federal Police also says Stoppe’s group grabbed more than 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of public land in the South of Amazonas — three times the size of São Paulo municipality.

“This is land-grabbing 2.0,” Scarpellini said. He explained that traditional land-grabbing — when the forest is cleared to open space for pasture — is easier to identify since deforestation rapidly appears in satellite imagery. However, the combination of carbon projects, where the forest was preserved, with illegal timber extraction from other places made the scam go unnoticed for many years.

“In this case, the forest remains intact; no alert will be raised in the systems that check it. They don’t have any problems with neighbors because they’re not going to seize private land, only public land. So there are no complaints from neighbors either. How do you find out that they are committing these crimes?”

According to the investigators, the grabbed public areas have been valued at 820 million reais ($156 million). The police seized 1.6 billion reais ($304 million) in assets and valued the environmental damage of the timber laundering scam at 606 million reais ($115.2 million).

 The investigators also found the group had contacts in state offices, like land reform agencies, who helped them obtain fraudulent documents to facilitate land-grabbing. As part of the operation, eight public servants were removed from office.

The REDD+ projects were developed by the Brazilian company Carbonext and certified by Verra, one of the world’s largest voluntary carbon market registries and the most important for REDD+ initiatives. None of them are under investigation.

“I believe that Verra is doing the certification incorrectly,” Scarpellini stated. “But I don’t know if it’s their fault because it’s based in the United States, and I don’t know if there’s land grabbing in the United States. But we have it here. And if we are a promising market [for carbon credits] they will have to adjust to certain circumstances here.”

Following Verra’s rules, the projects were verified by auditors contracted by the proponents, but they didn’t point to any irregularities.

For Shigueo Watanabe Junior, a senior climate policy specialist at the Talanoa Institute, a Brazilian think tank dedicated to climate policy, the investigations expose one of the gaps in the voluntary carbon credits market. “A REDD+ project in the Congo has to follow the same rules as a REDD+ project in the Amazon, even though all the conditions and problems are different,” he said.

The case came up amid the discussion in Congress on the implementation of a regulated carbon market in Brazil. “We believe that the operation is not intended to undermine the carbon credit market, but rather to strengthen the way in which projects are documented so that this doesn’t happen again,” Scarpellini said.

“I think this operation was excellent. It’s a clear signal to everyone that the bar has been raised,” Watanabe Junior said.

Mongabay’s investigation was published as part of the Opaque Carbon project, an alliance that investigates the functioning of the carbon market in Latin America and is led by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP).

The story was updated to add the information that Ricardo Stoppe turned himself in to the police on Jun. 7.

Banner image: The Federal Police launched the Greenwashing Operation against the proponents of some of the largest carbon credit projects in Brazil. Image courtesy of the Federal Police.

June 11 update: Carbon credit registry Verra has suspended the projects associated with this investigation following the Brazilian police raid, read more here:

Verra suspends carbon credit projects following police raid in Brazil

Top brands buy Amazon carbon credits from suspected timber laundering scam

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