BRASILIA: Brazil’s federal police are serving 14 search warrants on Monday in connection with a bribery probe implicating meatpacker JBS SA and tax authorities, they said in a statement.
The raids are based on plea bargain testimony by JBS executives who suggested that 160 million reais ($48.78 million) in bribes were paid to speed up the release of tax credits to the company, police said.
The police are serving the warrants in the cities of Caraguatatuba, Campos do Jordão, Cotia and Lins in Sao Paulo state, according to the statement.
JBS media representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The investigation implicates an unnamed federal revenue service auditor, a businessman, an accountant and a lawyer who died in 2016, police said. Authorities in charge of the probe estimate that the total tax credits released to JBS under the alleged scheme may have reached 2 billion reais.
