See who Brazil’s top environmental offenders are on CruzaGrafos 4u395f

In April 2025, CruzaGrafos (an Abraji/Brasil.IO platform) updated its Ibama and ICMBio database, making it possible to identify the individuals and companies with the most environmental notices and embargoes on record. For example, the system shows that Petrobras leads the ranking of notices (with 2,923 notices since 2000, not counting repeats - and including cases in the Coastal and Marine biome), followed by Companhia de Saneamento do Paraná - Sanepar (333), DNIT (214), Shell Brasil (138) and other companies. 1r4y4z

You can view the main results in this spreadsheet, which includes individuals and companies with environmental violations and embargoes from Ibama and ICMBio. Each infraction or embargo must be verified directly in Ibama or ICMBio’s official databases — refer to the project’s methodology for more information. All data on CruzaGrafos were last updated in April 2025.

In total, CruzaGrafos now brings together approximately 327,000 environmental infraction notices (Ibama + ICMBio) and around 86,500 environmental embargoes, covering more than 4.85 million hectares. The project is ed by the Earth Journalism Network, through the Biodiversity Media Initiative from Internews.

On the platform’s interactive map, the Amazon and Cerrado biomes concentrate the vast majority of embargoed areas (with Pará, Mato Grosso, Amazonas, and Rondônia leading). MapBiomas Alert layers often overlap with Ibama/ICMBio citations in protected areas, reinforcing potential leads on illegal deforestation.

New environmental features

The version released on April 16, 2025, introduced interactive georeferenced maps and thematic layers that enhance investigative capabilities. (Watch the launch event: Abraji’s livestream on April 16.) The platform now includes:

• Interactive maps with georeferenced points of environmental violations and embargoes. s can “explore territories, regions, and environmental events based on official data” by clicking on the exact location of each infraction.
• Special visual layers, such as MapBiomas Alerts (satellite monitoring of deforestation), boundaries of Indigenous Territories and Protected Areas (UCs), and satellite imagery from Google Maps and ArcGIS. These help contextualize each violation and reveal whether it occurred in protected or critically deforested areas.
• Map-based investigation tools: After identifying an infraction on a graph, s can load the case on a map, see nearby violations or those overlapping protected areas, and export data for external analysis. The tool also includes direct links to official Ibama and ICMBio systems for checking case status, and the interactive graph keeps track of relationships between companies, shareholders, managers, and infractions — enabling s to follow the full network of each violator.

This update represents a major qualitative leap for environmental investigations, as the platform now allows s to map and analyze links between environmental crimes, deforestation, violations, and protected areas in Brazil, based on official data from agencies such as Ibama, ICMBio, and partner systems like MapBiomas. In short, journalists can visually cross-reference business, political, and environmental data, quickly spotting deforestation hotspots and identifying shell companies or proxy owners linked to environmental crimes.

Tools for investigative journalism

All of these features journalistic investigations. For instance, journalists can use the map to locate all environmental embargoes in a given region and identify those responsible, or determine whether an embargoed farm lies within a Protected Area. CruzaGrafos also allows s to export filtered records into spreadsheets and provides infraction or case numbers that can be verified on Ibama’s official site.

In addition, the interactive graph format automatically links people and companies. When you click on a fined company, the graph displays its shareholders and other related companies (including known environmental offenders). This networked view helps uncover schemes: in past cases, a supposed landowner disappeared, but the graph revealed the holding company or actual owner behind the scenes.

Integrated databases

Even before this new phase, CruzaGrafos already integrated several high-value public datasets:

• Brazilian Corporate Registry (CNPJ): over 60 million companies and 25 million shareholders/s
• Electoral candidacies (TSE): data on over 1 million candidates from 2014 to 2024 elections
• Federal sanctions: records of penalties and disqualifications issued by federal agencies
• Federal Union’s debt registry: over 28 million entries, including unpaid taxes and labor fund debts
• Brazilian Aircraft Registry (RAB): ownership data for aircraft ed in Brazil

These datasets have already enabled major investigations by journalists, auditors, and researchers — such as identifying suspicious corporate connections, ties between politicians and shell companies, and beneficiaries of public programs with prior sanctions. See examples in the project’s newsletter: https://investigadora.substack.com/.

How to access CruzaGrafos

Abraji can access the tool directly by logging in with their ed email and :
 🔗 https://cruzagrafos.abraji-br.parainforma.com
Interested in becoming a member of Abraji?
 🔗 /associe-se

Language note

The interface and field names are currently in Portuguese, but any browser plug-in (e.g., Google Translate → “Translate this page”) will render the menus and tooltips into English, Spanish, or another language on the fly. If anything remains unclear, please let us know — an official English/Spanish UI is in the works.