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BRASILIA, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's federal police launched on Monday a new operation, named Greenfield, against fraudulent practices in four of the country's biggest public pension funds, Funcef and Previ for public banking employees, Petros for Petrobras employees, and Postalis for postal employees.
In a massive nationwide operation, 560 police agents carried out 127 searches in the states of Sao Paulo, Río de Janeiro, Bahía, Espíritu Santo, Río Grande do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Amazonas, as well as the Federal District.
A federal court ordered the seizure and blocking of assets in the bank accounts of 103 companies and individuals, reaching a total of 8 billion reais (2.5 billion U.S. dollars).
According to a police statement, the investigations began from 10 separate cases, which all received millions in missing capital from the pension funds.
A number of arrests were made, including Wesley and Joesley Batista, the controlling partners of J&F and directors of JBS, the largest meat exporting company in the world.
This operation could reflect badly on the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) of new President Michel Temer, and the Workers' Party of impeached Dilma Rousseff, who have been responsible for the naming of most pension fund executives in recent years.
All the pension funds involved are non profit and were created to maximize benefits from pension contributions made by state workers.
