Status: 06/24/2021 10:14 a.m.
The Brazilian Environment Minister Salles has resigned. He is being investigated for allegedly illegal timber trade and corruption. Under him, deforestation in the Amazon had increased sharply.
The controversial Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles has announced his resignation. “I have experienced a lot of hostility in these two and a half years,” he said in the presidential palace in Brasilia. President Jair Bolsonaro accepted his resignation, said Salles.
Bolsonaro thanked his outgoing Environment Minister. “Dear Ricardo Salles, you are part of the story. The connection between agriculture and the environment is an almost perfect marriage,” said the head of state. “But it is not easy to run this ministry. Sometimes what is left is just a bunch of lawsuits.”
Investigations into possible entanglements in the timber trade
Salles, 46, is suspected of being involved in the illegal timber trade. The Supreme Court opened an investigation last month into corruption and logging and obstruction of justice. It’s about illegal logging that Salles is said to have covered.
In 2020, the police confiscated the largest amounts of illegally felled Amazon wood in history. However, Salles had claimed the wood had been legally felled and tried to release it.
The head of the federal police in the Amazon state responsible at the time had reported Salles’ intervention in the case to the judiciary and was subsequently relieved of his post. With Salles’ resignation, the investigation against him will now be handed over to the first instance. As a minister, his case was previously with the highest authority. The judiciary has already ordered the lifting of his banking, telephone and tax secrecy.
Increasing deforestation under Salles
Salles was considered Bolsonaro’s closest confidante in his cabinet. At his request, Salles cut funds for environmental controls, especially in the Amazon. Bolsonaro’s stated policy is to facilitate production conditions for agriculture. Speaking to his ministers in April 2020, he proposed that the distraction of the media caused by the pandemic should be used to polish environmental standards.
Since Salle took office in January 2019, he had been criticized for the increase in deforestation and the dismantling of environmental controls. Under him, deforestation in the Amazon rose by 9.5 percent from 2019 to 2020. The number of forest fires had also increased. At the same time, he cut the funds for state control authorities, which environmentalists sharply criticized.
President Bolsonaro appointed Joaquim Alvaro Pereira Leite as the new environment minister.