Overview

• The labor court ordered 165 million reais in collective moral damages, described as the largest compensation of its kind in Brazil, and Volkswagen said it will appeal.
• Judge Otavio Bruno da Silva Ferreira found evidence the Pará operation belonged to Volkswagen and that the conditions met Brazil’s legal definition of slave labor.
• Prosecutors and court records detail armed surveillance, debt bondage, precarious housing, insufficient food, and denial of medical care, including for malaria.
• The farm, used for cattle and logging, employed about 300 workers under irregular contracts from 1974 to 1986 to clear forest and create pasture.
• The case stems from a 2019 investigation launched after a local priest supplied documents, with formal charges filed in 2024 following failed settlement talks.