The lawsuit had been filed by the company Suprema Emprendimientos Rurales y Participaciones. The judge Afranio de Andrade Filho considered on April 18 that Veracel acted in bad faith when it illegally installed in two rural plots of land that were not included in its purchase contract.

The company even planted eucalyptus in the lands, without having an environmental license.

The court’s ruling ordered that the two plots of land and the tree plantations be returned to Suprema Emprendimientos Rurales y Participaciones.

Veracel is part of the Swedish-Finnish company Stora Enso, also a forestry and pulp corporation, and of Brazilian corporation Fibria, which is considered the world’s largest bleached eucalyptus pulp producer.

The Public Attorney of Bahia is accusing Veracel of money laundry, tax evasion and corruption. The company has already been accused of illegal logging and of inadequate use of pesticides. Furthermore, large extensions of the company’s eucalyptus monoculture plantations have been planted without an environmental license.

But the accusations against Veracel do not end there. The company owned by Stora Enso and Fibria is also accused of violating the workers’ rights. In the recent years, over 850 lawsuits were filed in the labour court of Eunápolis against the company and its subcontractors.

One of the head companies, Stora Enso, follows the same path. On April 20, environmental organizations and producers from different countries accused the company of environmental crimes and corruption in Latin America. That day the company was holding its annual shareholders’ meeting in Helsinski, Finland, where it announced revenues of 817 million euros in 2010.

European and Latin American organizations used the opportunity to warn in a press release that the profits made by Stora Enso were linked to violations of the environmental, labour and criminal laws of Brazil and Uruguay.

The signing organizations were: Friends of the Earth Finland, Sweden, Brazil and Uruguay; The Center for Development Studies and Research of the Extreme South of Bahia (Brazil); the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), Friends of the Landless of Finland and the World Rainforest Movement.

In Brazil, Stora Enso is in the spotlight over Veracel’s criminal operations, but also because it has purchased lands illegally in Rio Grande do Sul, near the border with Uruguay. Stora Enso has used shell organization Azenglever Agropecuaria, to purchase those lands.

Meanwhile, Stora Enso together with Arauco own Montes del Plata in Uruguay, a company that is installing a pulp mill in Conchillas, Colonia department. Montes del Plata is the country’s largest land owner, with nearly 250,000 hectares of land. Nearly 140,000 hectares are forested with pine and eucalyptus monoculture plantations. Several Uruguayan environmental organizations are pointing at Stora Enso as key in the land concentration and foreignization process, together with other agribusiness companies.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrislang/