"Major Brazil palm oil exporter accused of fraud, land-grabbing over Quilombola cemeteries", 15 December 2022

...With trembling hands, Raimundo Serrão lights candles for his grandmother at the Livramento Cemetery’s cross on the Day of the Dead because he couldn’t find her grave. Serrão and others in the area say one of the country’s leading palm oil exporters has buried it under palm crops...“They have planted palm trees on top of her grave,” Serrão tells Mongabay in tears, blaming Agropalma, whose palm oil plantations engulf the cemetery on the banks of the Acará River in northern Pará state in the Brazilian Amazon...

The accusations are part of a wide range of land-grabbing allegations against Agropalma, the only Brazilian company with the sustainability certificate issued by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)...

Quilombola communities say that part of the area occupied by Agropalma overlaps with their ancestral land...The Livramento Cemetery is confined in oil palm crops and has a grave dated 1928; we also saw the remains of a chapel, a school, and a kitchen in the area registered as Agropalma’s legal reserve, where the Our Lady of Battle Cemetery is located.

...[T]he Public Defender’s Office says the existence of four Quilombola and Indigenous cemeteries in areas occupied by Agropalma between the municipalities of Acará and Tailândia is a critical piece of evidence of the communities’ right to the land....State prosecutor Eliane Moreira...says there is “no doubt” about the fraud that at first glance seems “such an unthinkable story”...

Agropalma recently requested the cancellation of the titles following the lawsuit. “The company claims that now in the course of the process, they themselves asked [for the cancellation]. … But they only took action after we filed the lawsuit”...

Brito denies the accusations that the company has unlawfully occupied public land. “Actually, we didn’t appropriate [the land]. We bought land. We bought land over a long period of time. We started buying land there in ‘81 and have been buying land until the 2010s,” he says. “We understand that yes, our titles have been canceled. They are temporarily canceled, and we will appeal. But the possession is ours.

“We bought [land] from the supposed owner at the time, in good faith. We paid the market price. We registered it in the notary’s office. Everything we did was transparent.”

He says that Forest Code and the Land Statute state that “who is in possession has the domain of that unit,” and “our possession is legitimate. It is peaceful. It is registered.”

Prosecutors are also seeking the withdrawal of Agropalma’s RSPO certificate...RSPO says it has not received any information regarding its progress. “Once a case goes to court, RSPO are solely observers of the legal process. As the matter is now being heard by the Courts, RSPO respects the local legal process and leaves judgement to the courts to determine the Complainants’ claim,” RSPO says...