Mongabay Features Our Whistleblower Claim against Meat-Processing Giant JBS

Journalist Fernanda Wenzel of Mongabay, a non-profit conservation and environmental science news platform, published a feature story on the SEC whistleblower case we filed against JBS on behalf of senior executives of Mighty Earth. Our complaint alleges that JBS sold to U.S. investors 3.2 billion in so-called “sustainability-linked bonds” that contained materially misleading statements and omissions regarding its greenhouse gas emissions.

The Mongabay article quotes Kevin Galbraith:

“They are distorting their efforts in the arena of scope 3 emissions, in particular, regarding deforestation in the Amazon and other regions within Brazil,” Kevin Galbraith, the attorney for Mighty Earth, told Mongabay in a video call from New York….

Galbraith said JBS deliberately sent mixed messages to investors by mentioning scope 3 in its public communications without including it in the bond’s target. “I am confident they were very, very intentional about choosing to speak out of both sides of their mouth,” he said….

“It is a full staff task force and we do expect the complaint to end up in their hands,” said Galbraith, Mighty Earth’s attorney, adding that the penalties may range from a monetary fine to preventing executives from occupying boards of public companies….

The article concludes with a cogent prediction by Gustavo Pinheiro, the coordinator of the Low Carbon Economy Portfolio of the Climate and Society Institute, the ICS, a Brazilian philanthropic organization working to tackle climate change: “This is just the beginning of a great movement. We will see more and more actions of this kind.”

We agree that as giant multinational organizations seek out U.S. capital markets to raise money to fuel their businesses, increasingly by making baseless claims about their environmental sustainability, this type of case is likely to recur.

We are proud to work with Glenn Hurowitz, Alex Wijeratna, Amanda Hurowitz and Carole Mitchell of Mighty Earth, along with filmmaker and activist on behalf of Brazilian indigenous people Edivan Guajajara and other environmental advocates as they seek climate justice and accountability and we work to protect the integrity of U.S. capital markets.

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 kevin@galbraithlawfirm.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.