📎 Source Note: Transparency is essential in journalism. The facts and figures presented in this article are derived directly from the legal filings in this case. A copy of which can be found at the bottom of this article. We encourage readers to review the primary source document for themselves.

Corporate Psychopathy Case Study: Starbucks & Its Alleged Foundation of Modern Slavery

TL;DR: Starbucks Corporation faces a landmark class-action lawsuit alleging the company knowingly profits from a supply chain built on human trafficking, child labor, and forced labor under “slavery-like conditions” on coffee plantations in Brazil. The legal complaint states that despite public promises of “100% ethical sourcing,” Starbucks’ verification program is a sham designed to provide cover for systemic human rights abuses, allowing the coffee giant to benefit from artificially cheap labor while its executives earn massive salaries.

The details that follow paint a devastating picture of corporate greed and the human cost of your daily coffee.

Introduction: The Bitterest Brew

The coffee sector in Brazil was founded on slavery and, according to a recent lawsuit, continues to depend upon it.

A new class-action lawsuit lays bare the brutal reality behind one of the world’s most beloved brands. The lawsuit alleges that Starbucks Corporation, a global giant that prides itself on its “purpose beyond profit,” is a primary beneficiary of a modern-day slave trade, sourcing coffee from Brazilian plantations where workers, including children, are subjected to debt bondage, forced labor, and horrific living conditions.

This case is an indictment of a global economic system that prioritizes profit above all else. It exposes the failures of corporate self-regulation, the toothlessness of ethical certification schemes, and the ways in which multinational corporations can insulate themselves from the human misery that fuels their growth. The story of the plaintiffs—identified only as John and Jane Does to protect them from violent retaliation—is a story of systemic failure, where the mechanisms designed to protect the vulnerable have become tools to legitimize their exploitation.

Inside the Allegations: A System of Trafficking and Abuse

The lawsuit, filed by International Rights Advocates, brings claims against Starbucks under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) and other laws. It details a well-established system where illegal labor brokers known as “Gatos” (cats or catchers) recruit impoverished workers from communities in the North of Minas Gerais, many of them Quilombos inhabited by the descendants of freed and fugitive slaves. These Gatos make false promises of high pay and good working conditions, often advancing money for travel and food, immediately ensnaring the workers in debt bondage.

Upon arrival at the plantations, which supply coffee to Starbucks’ major Tier 1 supplier, Cooxupé, the reality is a nightmare. The legal complaint alleges that workers are forced to endure grueling hours, are cheated out of their wages, live in squalor without proper sanitation or clean water, and face threats if they complain or try to leave. Each of the eight named plaintiffs in the case was officially found by the Brazilian government to have been trafficked and forced to work under “slavery-like conditions,” a finding that forms the damning core of the legal action against Starbucks.

Timeline of Alleged Exploitation and Corporate Inaction

The legal complaint outlines a history of warnings, investigations, and continued abuses that Starbucks allegedly ignored.

Date/Period	Event
Since 2015	Reports from Danwatch and Repórter Brasil begin linking Starbucks’ suppliers, including Cooxupé, to farms with “slavery-like conditions” and child labor. Starbucks is contacted for comment on multiple occasions.
2018-2019	Brazilian authorities rescue 24 workers from two farms in Minas Gerais that held the Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices certification seal. One farm owner is later added to Brazil’s “Dirty List” of employers using slave labor.
August 2018	Human rights organizations file a complaint against Starbucks with the OECD, detailing links to farms engaged in modern slavery. The complaint is rejected on technical grounds, a failure activists say highlights the weakness of non-judicial accountability mechanisms.
July 2022	A 17-year-old boy is among 26 workers rescued from farms managed by a family whose company had previously boasted of its Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices certification on social media.
August 2022	17 workers, including three minors, are rescued from slave labor at Mesas Farm, which also held a C.A.F.E. Practices seal. Workers were forced to buy their own tools and had no access to toilets.
2023	A Repórter Brasil investigation finds that a Starbucks-certified farm required workers to pay for their own expensive harvesting machines, an illegal practice. Starbucks responds with a statement that it is “deeply concerned” and will “investigate.”
April 2024	The owner of São João Farm, a Cooxupé member, is officially placed on Brazil’s “Dirty List” after plaintiffs John Doe IV and V were rescued from the property, where they worked 40 days without pay and were trapped in debt.
June 2024	Ministry of Labor inspectors rescue 23 workers, including a 16-year-old, from seven coffee farms in Minas Gerais. Two of the charged farmers were members of Cooxupé, Starbucks’ main supplier.
April 2025	The latest update to Brazil’s “Dirty List” includes several more Cooxupé-member farms where plaintiffs were rescued after being trafficked and forced to work under conditions the government deemed “slavery-like.”
April 23, 25	The class-action lawsuit, Doe et al. v. Starbucks Corporation, is filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Regulatory Capture & Systemic Loopholes

The horrors described in the lawsuit flourish in a system where state oversight is deliberately weakened and corporate self-policing is presented as a viable substitute. The complaint highlights the shockingly inadequate number of labor inspectors in Brazil. The state of Minas Gerais, home to approximately 119,000 coffee plantations, has only 245 inspectors, making comprehensive enforcement an impossibility. This skeleton crew of regulators means the “scale of slave labor” across the state is “likely to be significant and largely unchecked.”

This lack of state capacity is a feature, not a bug, of a neoliberal model that favors deregulation. The complaint notes that from 2019 to 2022, Brazil’s government dissolved the Ministry of Labor and slashed its inspection budget. This environment of impunity is further reinforced by political pressure; the lawsuit cites a federal deputy with ties to the coffee industry calling for inspection rules to be weakened, arguing that fines for using slave labor are “very heavy” and put producers “out of business.”

Starbucks’ own certification program, Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices, is presented in the lawsuit as a key part of this failed regulatory landscape. The complaint alleges it is a sham that provides a veneer of ethical legitimacy while failing to prevent, and in fact obscuring, widespread human rights abuses. Farms have repeatedly been found to be using slave and child labor while holding the C.A.F.E. Practices seal, a clear sign that the program serves more as a marketing tool than an effective compliance mechanism.

Profit-Maximization at All Costs

At the heart of this case is the relentless logic of profit maximization, a core tenet of modern capitalism that incentivizes corporations to cut costs at every turn, often with devastating human consequences. The complaint alleges that Starbucks’ immense profitability is directly tied to the exploitation of its most vulnerable workers. By sourcing coffee from plantations that suppress labor costs through trafficking and forced labor, Starbucks enhances its own bottom line.

The company earned net profits of $3.2 billion in 2022, with its U.S. stores accounting for 72% of sales. This wealth, the lawsuit argues, is built upon “ill-gotten gains.” The most alarming illustration of this value extraction is the chasm between executive compensation and worker pay. While the company’s newest CEO was paid approximately $96 million in just four months, the coffee workers harvesting the beans that generate this wealth live in squalor and are systematically underpaid or not paid at all.

This business model treats human beings as disposable inputs in a global assembly line. The complaint asserts that if Starbucks were to enforce its own Supplier Code of Conduct and ensure compliance with local and international labor laws, the cost of its coffee would rise. Instead, it chooses to turn a blind eye, reaping the financial benefits of a system that externalizes the true cost of production onto the bodies of trafficked workers.

The Economic Fallout: Debt, Destitution, and Extracted Wealth

The economic reality for the workers in Starbucks’ alleged supply chain is not one of opportunity, but of systemic impoverishment. The lawsuit meticulously documents how the Gato-run trafficking system is designed to create and sustain debt. Workers are advanced money for transportation, food, and even the tools required to do their jobs, ensuring they begin their employment already in bondage.

This debt is then compounded by wage theft. The complaint describes how farmers cheat workers by under-weighing the coffee they harvest or by making illegal deductions for equipment, fuel, and lodging. Plaintiffs John Doe IV and V worked for 40 days without receiving any pay. After illegal deductions were made for the Gato’s recruitment fee and equipment maintenance, they were left with almost nothing and were trapped on the remote plantation, unable to afford a bus ticket home.

This is a calculated business model that transforms labor into a source of debt from which the company benefits. This economic arrangement ensures a compliant, captive workforce while extracting maximum value from some of the world’s poorest communities. The wealth flows in one direction: from the fields of Minas Gerais to the corporate headquarters in Seattle, leaving behind a trail of broken promises and shattered lives.

Environmental & Public Health Risks: A Toxic Workplace

The exploitation of workers is mirrored by the exploitation of the environment, creating a doubly hazardous situation for those at the bottom of the supply chain. The lawsuit alleges that workers on Starbucks-supplying farms are instructed to spray dangerous pesticides, some of which are so toxic they are banned in the European Union. This work is done without any protective clothing or equipment, leading to direct exposure that can have deadly consequences.

These chemicals poison not only the workers but also the surrounding land and water. The complaint points to the contamination of local drinking water, a public health crisis that extends beyond the farm and into the local communities. Furthermore, the expansion of coffee cultivation is a leading driver of deforestation in Brazil. Between 2001 and 2015, coffee farming replaced an estimated two million hectares of forest globally.

These environmental harms are a direct violation of Starbucks’ own stated commitments. Its C.A.F.E. Practices program claims to have “zero tolerance for the conversion of natural forest to agricultural production” and for the use of prohibited pesticides. The reality on the ground, as detailed in the legal filing, suggests these are empty promises, sacrificed for the higher goals of production volume and profit.

Exploitation of Workers: “Degrading Human Dignity”

The conditions endured by the plaintiffs, as documented in official Brazilian government inspection reports cited in the lawsuit, are an affront to human dignity. The complaint offers a visceral look into the daily lives of those harvesting coffee for one of the world’s wealthiest corporations. Workers are forced to labor for 11-12 hours a day, seven days a week, often on dangerously steep terrain.

Their living quarters are described as squalid, with multiple people crammed into small rooms with moldy walls and mattresses on the floor. One inspection report noted the lack of doors for privacy and stoves located inside sleeping quarters, creating a fire hazard. There is often no access to clean drinking water, sufficient bathrooms, or sanitary places to prepare and eat meals. Workers frequently have to relieve themselves in the fields, creating unsanitary conditions for everyone.

This systematic degradation is compounded by psychological abuse and the constant threat of violence. Plaintiff John Doe I, a minor, was threatened with beatings by the Gato who trafficked him. Others were told they would be blackballed from the industry if they complained. This combination of physical deprivation and intimidation creates a powerful coercive environment, ensuring that workers are too poor, too isolated, and too afraid to escape.

Community Impact: Preying on the Vulnerable

The system of labor exploitation described in the lawsuit does not exist in a vacuum. It actively targets and preys upon specific, historically marginalized communities, perpetuating cycles of poverty and injustice. The complaint repeatedly notes that the Gatos recruit workers from Quilombos, rural communities in northern Minas Gerais originally formed by fugitive and freed slaves.

These communities, which the Brazilian constitution recognizes and protects, represent a legacy of resistance against the very system of plantation slavery that birthed Brazil’s coffee industry. That they are now a primary source for a new system of “modern” slavery is a cruel historical irony. The residents of the Quilombos are targeted precisely because they are vulnerable—they are often impoverished, lack formal education, and have few economic alternatives.

By participating in and benefiting from this system, the lawsuit argues that Starbucks is complicit in undermining these communities. The Gatos lure away their residents with false promises, trapping them in a cycle of debt and abuse hundreds of miles from home. This is the systematic destabilization of communities whose historical and cultural significance is rooted in the fight for freedom.

The PR Machine: Greenwashing Modern Slavery

A critical component of the alleged scheme is Starbucks’ sophisticated public relations apparatus, which presents the company as a global leader in corporate social responsibility. The lawsuit contends this is a deliberate and cynical deception designed to mislead consumers and regulators. The company’s website prominently features claims that “our purpose goes far beyond profit” and that it is committed to “investing in humanity.”

The C.A.F.E. Practices program is the centerpiece of this strategy. Developed with Conservation International and verified by third-party auditors, it is marketed as a rigorous system that ensures Starbucks’ coffee is “100% ethically sourced.” The lawsuit dismantles this claim, labeling the program a “sham” that provides cover for horrific abuses. It points to numerous documented cases where farms with C.A.F.E. Practices certification were simultaneously engaging in forced labor, child labor, and other severe human rights violations.

The complaint alleges that the program’s failures are systemic. Audits are often announced in advance, giving farm owners time to hide workers or conceal violations. Despite this, when confronted with evidence of abuse, Starbucks’ typical response is a boilerplate statement expressing “deep concern” and promising to “investigate,” actions the lawsuit implies are merely for show. This public performance of due diligence allows the company to maintain its ethical branding while allegedly continuing to profit from exploitation.

Wealth Disparity & Corporate Greed

The legal complaint against Starbucks is a case study in the extreme wealth disparities that characterize late-stage capitalism. The value generated by the grueling, underpaid labor of Brazilian coffee workers is funneled upwards to enrich corporate executives and shareholders thousands of miles away. The numbers presented in the lawsuit are staggering and obscene.

Starbucks’ newest CEO, Brian Niccol, was paid approximately $96 million in his first four months with the company. Meanwhile, a coffee farmer in Mexico, another country where Starbucks’ practices are under scrutiny, earns an average of $106 a month. The complaint calculates that it would take a Mexican coffee farmer over 7,000 years to earn what the Starbucks CEO made in a single month.

This is not a byproduct of the system; it is the system functioning as designed. Neoliberal capitalism is predicated on the idea that wealth should flow to capital, not labor. The lawsuit argues that Starbucks has perfected this model, creating a global supply chain that is ruthlessly efficient at extracting value from the poor and concentrating it in the hands of the rich.

Global Parallels: A Pattern of Predation

The allegations of abuse in Brazil are not an isolated incident, according to the complaint, but part of a global pattern of exploitation across Starbucks’ supply chains. The lawsuit methodically lists human rights violations in numerous other countries where the company sources its products, painting a picture of a corporation whose business model is fundamentally reliant on a global race to the bottom.

Kenya: On a tea plantation that supplied Starbucks, BBC reporters uncovered widespread sexual abuse, with supervisors demanding sex from women in exchange for work.
Guatemala: Investigators found children as young as 11 working “excessive hours” in “grueling conditions” on five different farms linked to Starbucks. Farm cooperatives reportedly received advance notice of certification visits.
China: Undercover investigations in 2024 on farms in Yunnan Province linked to Starbucks found evidence of child labor and adults working 12-hour days, seven days a week, for the entire three-month harvest season for low wages.
Uganda: In eastern Uganda, the prevalence of child labor in the coffee industry was found to be as high as 51% for young boys.
India: Coffee sourced by Starbucks has been linked to plantations in a district notorious for well-documented bonded labor.

This litany of abuses suggests that the problems are not confined to a few bad actors but are endemic to the company’s sourcing model. By presenting these global examples, the lawsuit argues that Starbucks is not an unwitting victim of a complex supply chain, but a repeat offender that has received a “steady stream of notice of illegal conduct in its operations around the world” and has done nothing meaningful to correct it.

Corporate Accountability Fails the Public

The persistent cycle of abuse alleged in the lawsuit raises a critical question: where is the accountability? The legal complaint suggests that existing mechanisms for corporate oversight have completely failed. The very organizations and programs designed to prevent these atrocities have proven to be ineffective, if not complicit, in perpetuating them. Attempts to seek justice through non-judicial channels have been fruitless, leaving victims with no recourse.

A formal complaint filed in 2018 with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), detailing modern slavery in Starbucks’ supply chain, was rejected on technical grounds unrelated to the facts. This failure highlights the inherent weakness of voluntary, non-binding corporate responsibility frameworks. They lack the teeth to compel change, allowing companies to sidestep accountability through procedural maneuvers while the core issues of exploitation remain unaddressed.

Even when Brazilian authorities conduct raids and add farm owners to the public “Dirty List” for using slave labor, the consequences for a multinational giant like Starbucks are minimal. The complaint suggests a pattern where Starbucks may temporarily suspend a supplier or issue a concerned statement, but there is no evidence of a systemic overhaul of its sourcing practices. The lawsuit itself argues that it is necessary precisely because these other avenues have failed, and the U.S. legal system provides one of the last available forums to hold the corporation accountable for the harm it allegedly causes abroad.

Pathways for Reform & Consumer Advocacy

While the lawsuit paints a bleak picture of corporate impunity, it also implicitly outlines a pathway toward meaningful reform. The legal action itself, brought under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), demonstrates that U.S. law can provide a powerful tool for holding American corporations accountable for human rights abuses in their global supply chains. The plaintiffs are seeking not only monetary damages for their suffering but also injunctive relief—a court order to stop the harmful practices.

True reform would require dismantling the failed model of corporate self-regulation. Instead of relying on a company’s own flawed and allegedly deceptive certification program like C.A.F.E. Practices, effective oversight would demand independent, third-party monitoring with real legal authority and unannounced inspections. It would necessitate complete supply chain transparency, not as a marketing promise, but as a legal requirement, so that abuses cannot be hidden behind layers of intermediaries.

Ultimately, the lawsuit suggests that accountability cannot be outsourced or left to corporate goodwill. It must be mandated by law and enforced by courts with the power to impose significant financial and legal consequences. The case serves as a call to action for consumers and regulators to look beyond the slick marketing and demand a system where the human rights of workers are no longer treated as an externality.

Legal Minimalism: The Art of Plausible Deniability

The corporate behavior described in the lawsuit is a masterclass in legal minimalism—the practice of adhering to the bare-minimum form of the law while violating its spirit and intent. This approach, a hallmark of late-stage capitalism, treats ethical obligations not as a moral baseline but as a branding exercise. Starbucks has a comprehensive “Supplier Code of Conduct” that explicitly prohibits forced labor, child labor, and requires compliance with local laws.

The complaint argues this code is little more than a prop. The company allegedly fails to enforce its own rules when they conflict with the primary goal of securing a cheap, steady supply of coffee. The C.A.F.E. Practices program is the ultimate instrument of this minimalism; it creates the

appearance of rigorous oversight through checklists and third-party verifiers, allowing Starbucks to claim due diligence while allegedly ignoring the rampant violations occurring on its certified farms.

This is how a corporation can publicly champion human rights while allegedly benefiting from their violation. It builds a fortress of policies and procedures that provides plausible deniability, allowing it to claim it is “deeply concerned” by allegations it has been aware of for years. The system is designed not to prevent abuse, but to manage the reputational risk associated with it.

How Capitalism Exploits Delay: Time as a Weapon

In the world of corporate accountability, time is a weapon, and it is almost always wielded by the powerful. The legal complaint reveals how strategic delays—whether from understaffed regulators or hollow corporate investigations—work to the advantage of the corporation, allowing profitable exploitation to continue for years without consequence. Reports linking Starbucks to forced labor in Brazil have been surfacing for nearly a decade, so this isn’t a new revelation by any means!

The legal complaint provides concrete examples of this dynamic. In one instance, a farm was not investigated by authorities until two years after a complaint was filed, simply because there were not enough available auditors. This bureaucratic paralysis means that by the time an issue is addressed, countless more workers may have been victimized.

Starbucks’ own response mechanism appears to weaponize delay. The company’s repeated promises to “investigate” allegations serve to placate the public and kick the can down the road, while the profitable sourcing relationships allegedly continue unabated. For a worker trapped in debt bondage on a remote plantation, every day of delay is another day of misery. For the corporation, every day of delay is another day of profit.

The Language of Legitimacy: Sanitizing Human Suffering

Neoliberal systems rely on a specialized, technocratic language to obscure ethical breaches and neutralize the severity of human suffering. The complaint shows how Starbucks has mastered this language, using a vocabulary of corporate-speak to create a reality that is completely divorced from the one experienced by its workers. The company’s public-facing materials are filled with sanitizing, aspirational phrases.

It claims to be “people positive,” “resource positive,” and committed to a “continuous improvement approach”. Its sourcing program is named “Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices,” a name that evokes fairness and partnership. This language is not accidental; it is a carefully constructed tool of legitimacy that frames a fundamentally exploitative relationship as a mutually beneficial one.

This stands in steep contrast to the language used by the Brazilian government inspectors who witnessed the conditions firsthand: “slavery-like conditions,” “degrading human dignity,” and “human trafficking for the purposes of labor exploitation”. The gap between these two vocabularies is the gap between marketing and reality. It reveals how corporate power is used to redefine exploitation as “equity” and modern slavery as a “sustainability challenge.”

Monetizing Harm: Turning Victimization into a Business Model

The system described in the lawsuit actively monetizes the suffering of its victims. The practice of debt bondage is not merely a tool of control but a direct revenue stream that flows up the supply chain. It is a business model that turns human desperation into a financial asset.

When a Gato recruits a worker, he often advances money for the 16-hour bus ride, for food, and for other initial expenses. The worker is now a debtor, and their labor is the collateral. The complaint further details how workers are forced to rent or buy their harvesting equipment, with the costs illegally deducted from their earnings, trapping them in a cycle of debt where their hard labor only pushes them deeper into the red.

This monetization of harm is a defining feature of predatory capitalism. It transforms basic human needs—transportation, food, shelter, the tools for work—into opportunities for financial extraction. The more vulnerable the worker, the more profitable the arrangement, creating a perverse incentive to perpetuate the very conditions of poverty and desperation that make workers susceptible to trafficking in the first place.

Profiting from Complexity: How Obscurity Shields Misconduct

A key defense for any multinational corporation accused of abuses deep in its supply chain is the complexity of that chain. The lawsuit against Starbucks argues that this complexity is not an unfortunate obstacle to oversight but a deliberate strategy to deflect liability. The path from a coffee bean in Brazil to a latte in a U.S. store is intentionally opaque, involving multiple layers of actors.

The structure involves individual workers trafficked by Gatos, who are then delivered to individual farms. These farms are members of a massive cooperative, Cooxupé, which acts as a single corporate entity and is Starbucks’ Tier 1 supplier. This multi-layered system creates multiple points of separation, allowing Starbucks to claim it has no direct relationship with the farms where the abuses occur, even as it exerts significant control over them through its supplier codes and certification programs.

The lawsuit seeks to pierce this veil of complexity by defining the relationship between Starbucks and Cooxupé as a “venture”. This legal argument asserts that they are not just buyer and seller but partners in a common enterprise for mutual benefit, and are therefore jointly responsible for the crimes committed within that enterprise. It is a direct challenge to a core strategy of late-stage capitalism, where the diffusion of responsibility has become a business model in itself.

This Is the System Working as Intended

It is tempting to view the allegations against Starbucks as a case of a good system gone wrong—a few bad apples, a breakdown in oversight, an unfortunate failure. The legal complaint, however, suggests something far more disturbing: this is the system of globalized, neoliberal capitalism working exactly as intended. The exploitation, the regulatory failure, the deceptive PR, and the immense profits are the predictable outcomes of an economic logic that structurally prioritizes shareholder value over human well-being.

When corporations are incentivized to relentlessly minimize costs, labor is inevitably the first casualty. When governments are persuaded to deregulate and defund their own oversight bodies, corporate self-policing becomes the default, with predictable results. When marketing is allowed to trump reality, “ethical” branding becomes a shield for unethical practices.

The legal complaint alleges that Starbucks built a business model that depended on it. The cheap labor provided by trafficked workers is not a bug in the system; it is a feature that directly contributes to the company’s competitive advantage and profitability.

In this context, the suffering of victims (many of whom are children, mind you) are just a cost of doing business, systematically externalized onto the most powerless people in the global economy.

Conclusion: The Human Cost of a Global Brand

At the end of the long and complex supply chain, beyond the corporate headquarters, the glossy annual reports, and the comforting aroma of a local coffee shop, are human beings. The lawsuit filed against Starbucks forces a confrontation with the profound human cost of a global brand. It is the story of John Doe I, a child forced to work barefoot after injuring his toe, feeling pain throughout his body as he carried heavy bags of coffee, and being threatened with beatings by his trafficker. It is the story of John Doe II and III, brothers who were systematically cheated, trapped in debt, and forced to live in squalor while working to produce coffee for a company whose profits are measured in the billions.

This legal battle is a demand for recognition and a challenge to an economic order that renders such suffering invisible. It asks whether a corporation can be allowed to build an empire on the promises of social good while allegedly benefiting from a system of modern slavery. The case against Starbucks is a chilling reminder that in our global economy, there is no such thing as a victimless crime, and the price of our daily comforts is often paid by someone else, somewhere far away, in a currency of stolen freedom and shattered dignity.

Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit? An Assessment

Based on the evidence presented within the 100-page complaint, this lawsuit is unequivocally serious and rests on a foundation of deeply disturbing, well-documented grievances. The claims are not based on speculation or hearsay. They are anchored in the official findings of a sovereign government’s labor authorities, who personally intervened to rescue the named plaintiffs from conditions they officially designated as “slavery-like”.

The complaint further buttresses its claims with years of extensive, independent investigative reporting from multiple media outlets and reports from established human rights organizations. It meticulously details the mechanisms of trafficking and debt bondage and directly links the implicated farms to Starbucks’ primary supplier in the region, Cooxupé. The legal action leverages a specific federal statute, the TVPRA, designed precisely to address the kind of extraterritorial human rights abuses alleged in the case!

This is a significant legal challenge that aims to hold one of the world’s most powerful corporations accountable for its alleged role in a system of modern slavery.

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Corporations harm people every day — from wage theft to pollution. Learn more by exploring key areas of injustice.

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💼 Labor Exploitation — Wage theft, worker abuse, and unsafe conditions.
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NOTE:

This website is facing massive amounts of headwind trying to procure the lawsuits relating to corporate misconduct. We are being pimp-slapped by a quadruple whammy:

The Trump regime's reversal of the laws & regulations meant to protect us is making it so victims are no longer filing lawsuits for shit which was previously illegal.
Donald Trump's defunding of regulatory agencies led to the frequency of enforcement actions severely decreasing. What's more, the quality of the enforcement actions has also plummeted.
The GOP's insistence on cutting the healthcare funding for millions of Americans in order to give their billionaire donors additional tax cuts has recently shut the government down. This government shut down has also impacted the aforementioned defunded agencies capabilities to crack down on evil-doers. Donald Trump has since threatened to make these agency shutdowns permanent on account of them being "democrat agencies".
My access to the LexisNexis legal research platform got revoked. This isn't related to Trump or anything, but it still hurt as I'm being forced to scrounge around public sources to find legal documents now. Sadge.

All four of these factors are severely limiting my ability to access stories of corporate misconduct.

Due to this, I have temporarily decreased the amount of articles published everyday from 5 down to 3, and I will also be publishing articles from previous years as I was fortunate enough to download a butt load of EPA documents back in 2022 and 2023 to make YouTube videos with.... This also means that you'll be seeing many more environmental violation stories going forward :3

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Aleeia (owner and publisher of www.evilcorporations.com)

Also, can we talk about how ICE has a $170 billion annual budget, while the EPA-- which protects the air we breathe and water we drink-- barely clocks $4 billion? Just something to think about....