Barclays’ billions bankrolling climate super polluter

Mighty Earth is calling for a financial probe into Barclays’ backing of the world’s most polluting meat company, JBS, and profiting from a multi-billion-dollar sustainable finance fraud, while turning a blind eye to corruption, deforestation and human rights abuses

Mighty Earth has filed a formal complaint with the financial watchdog in the UK calling for an investigation into how Barclays bankrolled billions to Brazilian meat giant and climate super polluter, JBS. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is being urged to investigate market misconduct by Barclays in underwriting $3 billion of JBS’s Sustainability-Lined Bonds (SLBs), which are alleged to be fraudulent.

Barclays is accused of greenwashing, fraud, financing illegal activity, money laundering and dismissing due diligence mechanisms in its dealings with JBS.  In July of this year, the FCA fined Barclays £42 million for a similar lack of due diligence in handling financial crime risk. In the case of JBS, Barclays either turned a blind eye, or wilfully manipulated its policies to allow it to continue profiteering from JBS’s super-polluting meat operations. Barclays underwriting of JBS’ dodgy SLB’s alone formed 40% of the banks sustainable financing targets in 2021. Whilst the bank publicised its green finance credentials, Barclays was bankrolling JBS’s criminal and destructive practices.

The Mighty Earth complaint outlines how Barclays, being the UK’s largest financier of the world’s biggest climate-polluting meat company, is undermining both consumer trust and the international reputation and integrity of not just Barclays, but the whole UK financial sector.

Gemma Hoskins, Global Climate Director at Mighty Earth said: 

“It’s scandalous that Barclays has made billions by turning a blind eye to JBS’s litany of wrongdoing over the last decade, supporting the meatpacker’s destructive business model of deforestation, pollution and corruption, and knowingly being complicit in a multi-billion-dollar sustainable finance fraud, which is greenwashing with bells on.”

“Barclays has a ringside seat to JBS’s climate-wrecking operations and yet bankrolled its so-called sustainable bonds issuance to the tune of billions, when it was fully aware that the meat giant’s massive emissions, larger than Spain’s, mean it has no chance of achieving its climate goals.”  

“Barclays has seemingly failed to carry out due diligence on one of its biggest clients and hasn’t been honest with its customers and investors. It’s time for the FCA to take a proper look at the toxic relationship between Barclays and JBS, which is breaching consumer trust and threatening the international reputation of the entire UK finance sector.”

Barclays as JBS’s “go-to bank”

Barclays has been by JBS’s side for the last decade, providing nearly $7 billion in finance, while the meatpacker ran up a long rap sheet of financial and corporate criminality. JBS’s two ultimate controlling shareholders, brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista, have been and remain subject to numerous criminal investigations and sanctions. Yet none of this has deterred Barclays from retaining JBS as a major client, bankrolling it for billions, prompting Bloomberg to dub Barclays as the “go-to bank for JBS after other institutions backed away from its scandals.

Bogus bonds scandal

In 2021, with a front row seat to JBS’s corporate malfeasance, Barclays acted as a leading facilitator as the Brazilian meat giant launched one of the largest ever portfolios of SLBs, resulting in the lowest borrowing costs in JBS’s history. However, the SLBs targets were not only negligible in their “sustainability,” but falsely claimed to be integral to JBS’s “net zero by 2040” commitment. Acting as lead and co-underwriter of the US$3 billion of JBS-issued SLBs in 2021, it’s alleged Barclays were complicit in fraud and greenwashing JBS’s climate credentials.

Barclays’ dodgy deals threaten UK sustainable finance hub ambitions

The UK government wants to lead the world in sustainable finance, but it’s ambitions will be threatened if institutions like Barclays continue to do business with companies like JBS which is linked to illegal deforestation, insider trading and cattle laundering.

Bigger JBS emissions problem for Barclays

Emboldened by its listing on the New York Stock Exchange, JBS has plans to expand its meat operations at home in Brazil and in the US, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. This will grow its emissions exponentially, increasing the magnitude of JBS’s impact on people and planet, and further damaging Barclays’ reputation as JBS’s No.1 UK financier.

ends

For more information or to arrange an interview please contact:

Carole Mitchell, Global Director of Communications (London)
[email protected]
+44 7917 105000

Gemma Hoskins, Global Climate Director (London)
[email protected]

Notes to Editors:

• In 2020, Barclays announced its ambition to be a “Net Zero” bank by 2050 and to align its entire financing portfolio to the goals of the Paris Agreement. In fact, Barclays has been Europe’s biggest investor in fossil fuels ($167 billion) and the UK’s largest financier of the industrial livestock sector ($28 billion).
• Between 2018 and 2023, Barclays earned $1.7 billion from financing JBS as the meat giant’s operations contributed to the invasion and destruction of an Indigenous territory in Brazil.
• JBS’s net zero commitment, which earlier this year its sustainability lead claimed, “was never a promise,” only accounts for its Scope 1 and 2 emissions, making up just 3% of the whole of the JBS Group’s total emissions. The net zero goal does not address its Scope 3 emissions which represent 97 % of the meat giant’s total greenhouse gas footprint. Scope 3 emissions include climate superheating methane emissions from livestock and carbon dioxide emissions from forest loss and land conversion.
• In 2021 JBS’s total emissions exceeded those of Spain, and it’s estimated the meatpacker is responsible for more than 4 million acres of deforestation in its beef supply chains in Brazil.
• JBS Group is the fifth largest emitter of methane on the planet and is responsible for more methane emissions than ExxonMobil and Shell combined.
• JBS Group is the world’s largest producer of animal protein with an aggregate daily processing capacity of approximately 75,622 head of cattle.
• The meat and dairy industries are the biggest emitters of methane emissions, yet JBS, the biggest meat company of all, doesn’t have any plans to address its impact on climate and nature.

Mighty Earth is calling for:

• The FCA to step up and enforce its own greenwashing and financial crime guidelines, by investigating misconduct by Barclays.
• The FCA to demonstrate it can properly fulfil its role to hold financial institutions like Barclays to account.
• The FCA to examine the current rules that allow billionaires to be protected, but not UK banking customers financing greenwashing.

About Mighty Earth

Mighty Earth is a global advocacy organization working to defend a living planet.  Our team has achieved transformative change by persuading leading industries to dramatically reduce deforestation and climate pollution throughout their global supply chains in palm oil, rubber, cocoa, and animal feed, while improving livelihoods for Indigenous and local communities across the tropics. www.mightyearth.org