Berlin. Volkswagen, the world’s second-largest car manufacturer, faces new accusations related to the dictatorship in Brazil, but this time for “slavery” practices between 1974 and 1986, several German media reported on Sunday.
The public television network ARD and the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported last week that the German group is summoned on June 14 before a labor court in Brasilia. The local justice sent a notification to the company on May 19.
When questioned, a Volkswagen spokesman assured that the company took this case “very seriously” and the “possible incidents” that would have occurred “and on which the investigations of the Brazilian judicial authorities are based.” However, the group did not give further details “due to possible legal proceedings.”
The events of which the group is accused would have occurred between 1974 and 1986, when a dictatorship was in force in Brazil (1964 to 1986). Employees of the group during that period have been claiming compensation for several years, but so far without success.
human trafficking
According to the German press, the complaints examined by the Brazilian justice allege that the car manufacturer used “practices analogous to slavery” and “human trafficking” and accuse the group of having been complicit in “systematic violations of human rights “.
At that time, the group’s project was to build a large agricultural site on the banks of the Amazon for the meat trade, the “Companhia Vale do Rio Cristalino”.
To do this, hundreds of day laborers and temporary workers were hired through intermediaries for deforestation work on 70,000 hectares of land. According to the German media, it is likely that the company’s management consented to these hirings.
“It was a modern form of slavery,” the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Rafael Garcia, told German media.