The Marajó REDD Project in Brazil: The company has become an “agent of violence”, promoting “true chaos within the territories”

“Abusive” contracts, land grabbing, seven legal cases, threats, and accusations

The Marajó REDD Project covers an area of 138,285 hectares in the State of Pará, Brazil. The project developer is a United Arab Emirates company called Pará REDD Projects Limited. The project started in October 2021, and over the 40-year project period, Pará REDD anticipates that it will generate almost 12 million carbon credits.

But an investigation by Brazilian journalists João Peres and Tatiana Merlino, published by Sumaúma in partnership with O Joio e O Trigo, reveals land grabbing and “abusive contracts” relating to public lands associated with the project. Since 2021, when the communities signed contracts there have been seven lawsuits in Brazil’s courts, generating thousands of pages of documents, threats, and accusations.

One of the interesting aspects of this investigation by Peres and Merlino are the links to other people associated with other REDD projects in Pará.

Kevin Tremain, Amazon Forest People

The project description document explains that “the project has established partnerships to promote the sustainable use of non-timber forest products”. The document lists two companies with which partnerships have been set up: Amazon Forest People; and Amazon Oil.

The project description document describes Amazon Forest People as “a local cosmetics company” and Amazon Oil as “a Brazilian-Amazonian oil-chemical company active in the segment of cold extraction of oils from Amazonian oilseeds”.

In fact, both companies are incorporated in the UK. The sole director of both companies is Kevin Tremain.

On his LinkedIn page, Tremain claimed to be the founder of ADPML, the company running the ADPML Portel Pará REDD project, which has since been renamed as the Pacajai REDD+ project. Tremain is the son of Kenneth Noye, who was involved in the £26 million Brink’s-Mat gold heist in London in 1983. Most of the gold has never been traced.

When The Mirror asked Tremain about ADPML, he described himself as a consultant.

Andrew Fox, Oak Trust

A glossy corporate brochure for Amazon Forest People states that Andrew Fox is director of Amazon Forest People and ADPML. Fox worked at a company called Oak Trust, that was incorporated in the tax haven and secrecy jurisdiction of Guernsey.

Fox told The Mirror that “I resigned from Oak Trust in February 2021 and have ceased to have anything to do with ADPML Ltd.”

Fox’s LinkedIn page states that he worked at Oak Trust (Mauritius) and Oak Trust (Guernsey) until August 2021. Since March 2023, he was worked for a company called LC Abelheim, also based in Mauritius.

Peres and Merlino uncovered an email from Fox dated 16 October 2023 to Bruno Tavares da Silva. In the project description document of the Marajó Redd Project, Tavares is described as the co-founder and CEO of REDDA projectos Ambientais Sociedade Ltds (shortened to Redda+) a company based in Belém, Brazil.

Bruno Tavares da Silva, Redda+ and Pará Redd

Peres and Merlino write that,

Redda+ and Pará Redd are two separately registered companies, but in practice they work together and are connected to the same investors.

Bruno Tavares worked as a Military Policeman in São Paulo. He left the police in 2021, a few weeks after communities had signed contracts for the Marajó REDD Project, and four months after Redda+ received a corporate taxpayer ID number.

Bruno Tavares introduced himself to the communities in the Marajó REDD project area as acting on behalf of investors in the United Arab Emirates. He travelled in and out of the communities’ territories. But once he had persuaded them to sign the contracts he became much more difficult to contact.

Redda+’s website includes the claim that the company is certified by carbon credit certifying company Verra under its Verified Carbon Standard and Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards. Yet the project is listed on Verra’s registry as “Under validation”, which means that it is not yet certified.

The website lists no projects. The “Our team” page of the website makes no mention of anyone who works there.

In a lawsuit brought in the Pará state courts, Peres and Merlino uncovered a document that lists Andrew Harvey Fox as the sole shareholder of Pará REDD. The document awards power of attorney to Bruno Tavares.

PHOTO Credit: Sumaúma.

Two sources told Peres and Merlino that Tavares had worked as a security guard for Kevin Tremain at ADPML. On 25 September 2023, Tremain sent an email to Tavares:

Due to the unstable situation and concerns raised, I am forced to take measures to protect my interests and investments . . . . We would like to inform you that we’ve sent US$ 400,000 for expenses through the end of 2023, but we will only send US$ 150,000 to Redda+ for expenses.

The email was copied to Andrew Harvey Fox and Tahsin Choudhury, the director of NET Zero Sustainability Limited. Choudhury told Peres and Merlino that, “You are mistaken in that I am not an owner of REDDA and therefore your questions are no longer relevant in that context.”

Fox, Tremain, and Tavares did not respond to the journalists’ questions.

Alia Haskouri-Azzaoui and Naro Zimmerman, JTC Group

Another company is also involved, called JTC Group. In the project description document, Alia Haskouri-Azzaoui is listed as a director of Para REDD. His email address is:

On 26 October 2021, Naro Zimmerman signed a power of attorney allowing Tavares to represent Redda+ legally. At the time, Zimmerman was a director of JTC Group in the United Arab Emirates. On Verra’s registry, Zimmerman is listed as the contact person for Pará REDD, and his email address is also at the JCT Group.

When Peres and Merlino asked Zimmerman for a comment, he replied,

I’d like to clarify that the contract you mentioned earlier was terminated by mutual agreement in June 2023. As a result, no REDD+ project has been initiated in that particular area. We will be making no further comment and reserve all rights.

JTC Group is a network of companies providing financial asset management. The companies are registered in a long list of tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions, including the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Luxembourg, Mauritius, the Netherlands, Ireland, Singapore, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the states of Delaware, South Dakota, and Texas in the USA.

In addition to digging into the corporations and people behind this project, Peres and Merlino spoke to several of the communities involved in the REDD project.

The Marajó REDD project involves four communities. Three are extractive communities and one is a Quilombola community. Quilombolas are descendants of escaped enslaved people.

Camutá do Pucuruí

One of the communities involved in the REDD project is Camutá do Pucuruí. In 2009, it became the first community in Pará to be recognised as an extractivist settlement. The community is inside a state conservation area, where the entire population has to be authorised by the government to live there. Only sustainable activities, developed by the communities, are allowed.

Selma França Marques, a resident of Camutá do Pucuruí, told Peres and Merlino that she didn’t take part in the early meetings. When she did start taking part,

“The company’s representative wouldn’t let us speak. He would talk louder, with a kind of arrogance. And we started to get suspicious.”

After the contract was signed, “They just completely disappeared,” Débora Coutinho Pimentel, a resident of Camutá do Pucuruí told Peres and Merlino.

“We were getting suspicious, we hired a lawyer, we went to look at it and the mistakes were right there. They come with that sweet talk. They knew we didn’t have a lot of wealth, so they wanted to trick us. So they say marvellously good things. And then people fall for their sweet talk.”

José Cândido Gomes da Silva goes by the name Mapará. He is the president of the Association of Rural Workers of Camutá do Pucuruí. He told Peres and Merlino that meetings with Pará REDD took place in 2020 and 2021, during the COVID pandemic.

Other carbon companies arrived in the community during that period. The directors of the Camutá do Pucuruí association thought that the Redda+ and Pará REDD proposal was the best.

Mapará told Peres and Merlino that,

“The biggest topic of discussion was the cost spreadsheet. But not the contract. We signed. When we went to look at it, a lot of things we’d asked to remove ended up appearing in the contract.”

Peres and Merlino asked Mapará whether Redda+ had explained to them how carbon markets work. “No,” he replied.

“To this day we’re trying to find out. We asked for a translation, because they said they had to fulfill an international standard. I didn’t know which standard it was. They needed to translate it so we could understand if it was true or not. This standard never appeared.”

The contract that Camutá do Pucuruí signed states that the company Pará REDD,

intends to make payments to the association, as a provider of environmental services, through the direct, monetary payment modality and, also, by providing social improvements to rural and urban communities.

But under the contracts, Pará REDD owns 100% of the carbon credits generated from the project. There is no explanation in the contract about how payments to communities will be made. Peres and Merlino note that,

As the full owners of the credits, these companies could therefore double, triple, or quadruple sales without it resulting in any additional disbursements to residents.

Antônio Gomes Pimentel, the secretary of the Camutá do Pucuruí association, explained that “They talked about paying a Redda stipend.” But this would amount to only US$24 per family each month - even less than the US$31 that company told Antônio it would pay. In addition there would be US$2,000 each month for building or refurbishing schools and hospitals and installing solar panels and wells.

Peres and Merlino report that in April 2022, Redda+ sent an official letter confirming that the company intended to issue credits for all 17,900 hectares of Camutá do Pucuruí.

Débora, a resident of Camutá do Pucuruí told Peres and Merlino that,

“It was there in the contract. When they [the association’s directors] brought us the document to read, to explain what the situation was, it was already done. The damage was insane. So it was something that caught everyone very much by surprise.”

One community member, who asked to remain anonymous, told Peres and Merlino that, “They said it would make R$40 million to R$80 million [for the community] over 40 years.”

That’s between US$7.3 million and US$14.6 million. But the community member said that’s not what happened:

“Except that over the course, after the contract was signed, they didn’t do everything they’d promised. They said how much [would be paid], but each month they cut the amount. It was cut in half. Then it was reduced even more.”

Alto Camarapi

The contract signed with the Alto Camarapi association states that the companies could access any area in the territory, whenever, and as often as they wanted to, for a 40-year period. The community could not sign other contracts without the approval of the companies behind the REDD project. They also relinquished all rights to the creation, development, and execution of the project.

The Alto Camarapi association’s title was recognised in 2019. The association then filed a request with the Pará state government’s Office of the Environment and Sustainability Secretary for legal permission to extract timber.

One resident told Peres and Merlino that Redda+ said that the methodology they were proposing would allow communities to manage the forest. But in September 2023, Redda+ called the community to sign a document to change the methodology.

The resident told Peres and Merlino that,

“Anyone with [a management plan] would have to cancel [it]. They couldn’t plant any crops. They couldn’t do subsistence farming. It would directly interfere with our way of life. We did not agree.”

Threats and a violent video

Tensions increased. In November 2023, a livestock farmer called Leide Gerônimo sent a video to a WhatsApp group made up of residents of Portel. Peres and Merlino report that the video showed,

a person on the ground, covered in blood and motionless, being stabbed and their skin being ripped off.

After a frightened reaction from the Portel residents, the video was deleted.

Gerônimo is under investigation by Pará’s government for land grabbing in the area of the REDD project.

Two days after Gerônimo sent the threatening video, his sons Wilton and Weldes took part in meetings in Alto Camarapi with representatives from Redda+. The meeting took place without the approval of the residents’ association.

One of the Redda+ employees, Reginaldo Lima said that no president of a community association has the power to remove the company from their territories.

Alto Camarapi and another association, Acangatá, are trying to get out of the REDD contract. The association of Alto Camarapi has a lawsuit asking for Redda+ representatives to be blocked from entering the extractivist reserve.

In the lawsuit, the lawyer Guilherme Sobral writes that,

Residents began to experience daily threats. Members and the board started to receive threats inside and outside of the territories, since there were already conflicts and pressure to deforest areas.

Sobral writes that the company became another “agent of violence”, promoting “true chaos within the territories”. Sobral writes that,

After the association turned down the contract, the company began to importune, intimidate, and threaten association leaders and workers, to agree to their illegalities and acts of violation of territorial rights and self-governance.

On 6 March 2024, the Prosecutor General of the State of Pará filed a lawsuit on behalf of two of the four associations asking that contracts signed with Redda+ under the Marajó REDD project be cancelled.

The lawsuit was thrown out because the judge argued that the associations should file the lawsuit as plaintiffs, not the prosecutor.

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