In fight with Simpar, owner of JR Diesel is removed – 01/15/2024 – Market

The São Paulo Court decided to provisionally remove businessman Geraldo Rufino from command of JR Diesel, the largest company dismantling and selling vehicle parts in Latin America, which has been in judicial recovery since 2016.

A series of suspected bankruptcy crimes against JR Diesel are in court, with evidence of money being transferred to companies belonging to Rufino’s family and people linked to him.

At the time of the decision, handed down in December, a monocratic deliberation had converted the company’s judicial recovery into bankruptcy. A judicial manager and a judicial administrator were then appointed to carry out the company’s duties.

But, after the decision to remove Rufino, the STJ (Superior Court of Justice) accepted an appeal from the businessman’s defense, on the grounds that the decision to convert judicial recovery into bankruptcy was unfounded, as this had not been requested by no creditors.

The request for Rufino’s removal from command of JR Diesel was made by the logistics company JSL, which is part of the Simpar group, which is publicly traded on the stock exchange. Simpar also owns Vamos Caminhões and Movida.

Heard by SheetRufino says that his fight with the Simpar group has its origins in a personal issue, a R$ 2 million credit that his son, Guilherme Rufino, took in the past from Fernando Simões, CEO of the Simpar group, and was unable to comply with The payment.

The loan was made to Guilherme’s company, GFR. Rufino says he was friends with Simões for 30 years and decided to act, together with his wife, Marlene Matias Rufino, as guarantor for his son, who was unable to return the credits at the time because he ended up in financial trouble due to a problem with alcoholism.

According to the businessman, when Simões realized that Rufino and his son did not have the money to pay the debt, he went after JR Diesel, which had entered into judicial recovery in 2016 with a debt of R$42 million.

When contacted, the Simpar group had not responded at the time of publication of the report.

In January of this year, Guilherme Rufino, Geraldo’s son, was appointed by the administration of Ricardo Nunes (MDB), mayor of São Paulo, as coordinator of Cultural Promotion and Training at the Department of Culture.

According to the Panel column, Sheetshortly after the appointment, the city council gave up calling Guilherme upon discovering that, in 2022, he was one of the targets of Operation Fiat Lux, by the Federal Police and the Federal Highway Police, which is investigating the cloning of 3,300 Army vehicles.

According to investigations, those allegedly involved cloned the chassis of Army vehicles to obtain legitimate documents and legalize stolen vehicles.

Geraldo Rufino, in turn, says that he is not wanted by the courts and that the problem is not his company itself. He states that the case involving the judicial recovery of JR Diesel is one of “persecution and procedural harassment by giants”.

“Now they say I’m in the police’s sights. But since I’m in the police’s sights, if there’s no investigation, there’s no BO [Boletim de Ocorrência] against me?” asks the businessman.

According to Rufino, JR Diesel’s initial debt of R$42 million from the time his company went into judicial recovery has now been reduced to R$18 million. Furthermore, he states that the company has doubled in size in the last two years and is in financial health to exit the judicial recovery process.

He says that, at the time of the request for judicial recovery, the company had revenues of R$17 million, but in 2023 JR Diesel had revenue of R$54 million.

“We buy 32 trucks a month and dismantle a truck every three hours,” he says.

Rufino states that he is now waiting for the São Paulo Court to comply with the STJ’s decision so that he can return to command the company.

In the process in which Rufino was removed, there are a series of suspicions raised by the judicial manager. One of them is the existence of a folder with the title “Box 2”.

According to Rufino, the company separates the entry and exit information of the store’s cashiers by number, as the company has five cashiers. It says each box has a folder with a number from 1 to 5.

The process also reports outflows from the company’s cash flow throughout 2023 totaling R$1.5 million in transfers to people close to Rufino and companies linked to the family. According to the businessman, what the process does not report is the entry, with his own money, of another R$5 million into the company.

He also argues that the transfers to other companies were directly related to business between JR Diesel and these companies.

“The company has cash, there’s nothing wrong going on. I’ve never had a police report against me, I’ve never had a problem with the police. I lived in the favela and I’ve never had a problem with the police that involved not even a cassette player”, he says in his defense.

Regarding Guilherme, Rufino says that the accusations are false and that his son had his arrest revoked in the PF operation for proving his innocence.