Brazil’s Federal Police have indicted 31 suspects for fraud and land-grabbing in a massive criminal carbon credit scheme in the Brazilian Amazon. It is the largest known criminal operation involving carbon credit fraud to date in the country.

In 2024, the Netherlands-based Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA) had analysed the REDD+ projects, called Unitor and Fortaleza Ituxi, owned by Grupo Ituxi, at Mongabay’s request, finding a mismatch between their declared volume of logged timber and the logged volume estimated through satellite images, suggesting possible timber laundering. Their carbon credits were sold to companies like GOL Airlines, Nestlé, Toshiba and PwC.

The police investigation confirmed that two REDD+ project areas were generating carbon credits at the same time they were being used to launder timber taken from other illegally deforested areas.