Sao Paulo | Reuters — 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 (C$62 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 Jordao, Cotia and Lins in Sao Paulo state, according to the statement.
JBS said in an emailed statement to Reuters that tax credits received by the company were legitimately owed to it.
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 two billion reais.
— Reporting for Reuters by Eduardo Simoes; writing by Ana Mano.
