JBS Shares Begin Trading on NYSE Despite Money-Laundering Objections

On behalf of our client Mighty Earth, an environmental non-profit, we have been calling attention to Brazilian meat giant JBS’s illegal activities for years.

First, we filed a complaint with the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, setting out how the company had fraudulently raised over $3 billion in so-called “sustainability-linked bonds” on the promise that the company would be “Net Zero by 2040” when it had no intention or plan to reach that target and in fact its greenhouse gas emissions were rapidly rising every year, outstripping those of many industrialized countries. When we unearthed new evidence of its false claims, we filed supplemental submissions with the SEC, urging them to open a formal investigation and hold the company accountable for the fraud it was perpetrating against U.S. investors.

Next, we alerted the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance to the fact that JBS was likely to seek an IPO of its stock on the New York Stock Exchange, and warned them against approving such an offering until the company came clean about its record on bribery, forced labor, price-fixing, illegal deforestation of the Amazon and other protected regions within Brazil and violations of the rights of Indigenous peoples. Every time JBS amended its F-4 registration statement, disclosing additional wrongdoing and risk, we scoured the amended filings to see what was still missing, and there was always something missing.

After the hoped-for IPO had been delayed by well over a year, a JBS subsidiary paid $5 million to the Trump inaugural fund, and the IPO was approved almost immediately thereafter.

Once the SEC greenlighted the IPO, we turned to the New York Stock Exchange, raising a series of concerns about the planned listing. First, we pointed out that listing the shares of an endemically criminal company would violate the NYSE’s own ethical obligations. And next, in collaboration with cutting-edge UK lawyers, we warned the NYSE that, by JBS’s own admission, it could not assure observers that its cattle were “clean,” i.e., not taken from illegally deforested land. As a result, the company’s profits were illicit, and allowing those profits to be securitized and sold to U.S. investors on the world’s largest stock exchange amounted to money laundering.

Despite our efforts, the NYSE approved the listing and JBS’s shares began trading on June 13, 2025. Chloe Sorvino of Forbes filed a scathing report on this matter, and you can read it here. Global Data reported on several NGOs’ warnings concerning the listing of JBS’s shares. Our original whistleblower complaint and Mighty Earth’s press release are here.

Our efforts will not stop. We will continue to work on every available avenue to hold JBS accountable, to bring its misconduct to light and to help protect U.S. investors avoid being defrauded by this global behemoth.

If you are aware of other examples of companies misleading investors through “greenwashing” claims, please contact a securities fraud attorney at The Galbraith Law Firm by emailing inquiry@kevingalbraithlaw.com or calling 212.203.1249, for a free confidential consultation and evaluation of your potential whistleblower claim. Whistleblowers can be either company insiders or outside observers who have detected corporate wrongdoing.