A recent study published by Imazon, the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment, demonstrates how difficult it is to punish land grabbing in the Brazilian rainforest. The researchers analyzed 78 criminal lawsuits related to land-grabbing cases, most of them in Pará state, followed by Amazonas and Tocantins.
Most of the legal actions started between 2010 and 2015 and involved illegal appropriation of public and private settlements.
Imazon examined 526 court decisions, 134 of which involved accusations of land grabbing. Of the latter cases, only two, or less than 2%, resulted in a conviction. In 33% of cases, the statute of limitations had run out; in 28%, the defendants were acquitted; and in 15%, the cases were dismissed.
“As it stands today, this is a behavior that either goes unpunished or is worth it, because in the end you will convert the penalty into a food basket,” said Imazon researcher Brenda Brito.
The invasion of public areas for land speculation is a major driver of deforestation in the Amazon. Mongabay has previously reported on how land grabbers often follow a familiar playbook: producing fake contracts and fraudulent purchase and sales agreements to create the appearance of legal ownership.
In the cases in which defendants were cleared of land grabbing, they said they didn’t know it was public land and presented such contracts as proof of having acted in good faith. “Even though this type of contract is not valid in the case of public land, it ended up being used to absolve the occupants of the crime of invasion and legitimize this occupation,” Brito and co-researcher Lorena Esteves wrote.
In the two cases where land grabbers were convicted, both were notified by public authorities that they were illegally occupying the area — documentation that was decisive for discrediting the good-faith argument in court.
“People could no longer say, ‘I didn’t know [it was public land],’” Brito told Mongabay. She called on the Brazilian land agency to increase the number of notifications it issues to land grabbers to improve the outcome of prosecutions. “The federal government has to start notifying everyone who began occupying the area after the deadline set by law.”
The researchers also recommended stricter penalties for land grabbing and the creation of a new criminal offense for selling public land. They also pointed to the long time it takes for cases to go to court: the average was six years, with up to 18 years in some cases. By then, the statute of limitations had run out in many of the cases.
“People in the area see that it pays to [invade public land],” Esteves told Mongabay. “They spend money on a good lawyer who understands the structure of the judiciary and knows about its lack of resources.”
Banner image: Researchers analyzed 134 court decisions related to the invasion of public lands, only two of which resulted in convictions. Image courtesy of Bruno Kelly.
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