According to minutes of an administrative hearing on the probe seen by Reuters on Wednesday, Volkswagen requested more time to review reports alleging human rights violations akin to ‘modern slavery’ on a farm it owned in Brazil between 1974 and 1986.
Volkswagen was summoned to an administrative hearing in Brasilia on June 14 to review reports alleging mistreatment of temporary workers at the farm in Brazil’s Amazon region filed by the Ministry of Labor.
According to the minutes, lawyers for the carmaker stated that the company needed more time to analyse the reports because this was the first meeting on the subject, but that it was treating the case seriously and committedly.
Before submitting reports of mistreatment to prosecutors in 2019, Ricardo Rezende, a priest and professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, gathered testimonials from farm workers. According to the minutes of the June 14 meeting, Brazil’s Ministry of Labor then independently investigated the claims, collecting its own testimonials from workers who are still alive.
‘The stories are powerful, reporting on situations of intense and long-lasting violence of a grave nature… The depicted situations are among the most serious that the Ministry of Labor has become aware of in terms of modern slavery ‘According to the minutes.
There were allegations of repeated outbreaks of malaria among workers, deplorable living conditions, debt systems, and discrimination between permanent workers in the headquarters and temporary farm workers.
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