The rift between the founding partners of Agrolend has gone beyond an internal disagreement and has taken on greater dimensions with audio recordings revealing questionable strategic decisions at a time when the fintech company specializing in agribusiness credit was consolidating funding rounds and expanding its investor base.
NeoFeed gained access to the legal proceedings underway in the São Paulo Court of Justice, which pit Valéria Fontana Bonadio Bittencourt, the founding partner responsible for risk and compliance , against brothers Alan and André Glezer. The documents were under seal, but Judge Grava Brazil, the case's rapporteur, ordered the confidentiality to be lifted.
In the documents, Valéria Bonadio claims to have been the target of a process of stripping her of her functions, with the removal of her responsibilities and limited access to relevant information. According to the documents, structural decisions were allegedly made without following the rules of deliberation and without her consent.
The entrepreneur further argues that there has been a concentration of decision-making power and changes in the company's strategic management which, in her view, represent risks to governance and to the operational integrity of Agrolend itself.
On the other hand, the Glezer brothers argue that the measures taken were necessary to preserve the company and its growth strategy.
An audio recording from February 21, 2025, in a meeting room in São Paulo, exposes venture capital investors and suggests fraud in the fintech's financial figures.
"We manipulated all the numbers from last year to break even. Does this company have a real value higher than the capital we raised? No. Maybe we'll build that," said André Glezer in the audio attached to the lawsuit.
He then adds: “It’s possible to sell this to someone, it’s possible to do an IPO. It’s one thing to fool the venture capitalist who came here and bought a dream and put in money, okay? It’s another thing to sell this to Itaú, do an IPO, which is a much smarter entity. We performed four miracles here, completing four rounds of fundraising. There might be a fifth, maybe yes, maybe no.”
Agrolend's cap table lists the presence of global venture capital funds, strategic investors, and financial institutions.
Among them are Valor Capital Group, Continental Grain Company, SP Ventures, Provence Capital, Barn Invest, Lightrock, Creation Investments, Syngenta Group Ventures, Vivo Ventures (Vivo's CVC arm), L4 Ventures (linked to B3), and Norinchukin Bank, as well as the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
In 2024, Agrolend's R$300 million Series C funding round was one of the largest investments ever made in a Brazilian agtech company, second only to the round for Solinftec, a startup specializing in crop monitoring technologies.
Meeting and company status
The excerpt above is a small sample of a conversation during a corporate dispute. NeoFeed had access to the full audio of the meeting, which is almost one hour and nine minutes long.
The meeting on February 21st began with an administrative agenda: the Glezer brothers would inform Bonadio of their decision to create a new legal business area, removing the team that had been built from its structure.
According to the document, the partner, who had lost her father days earlier and returned to work on the third day of mourning, was caught by surprise (the person for the new position had already been chosen).
In the midst of this conversation, which was aimed at finding a value for the founding partner's shares in the business, André tried to contextualize the company's true state and justify the need for changes. He revealed that the financial results presented to the market in 2024 did not reflect reality.
“What is the real value that we have built here in these four years? Taking away raising money and putting it in the cash register, it's zero. The company hasn't made a profit. A company only exists if its sole purpose is to make a profit above the cost of capital. We've never done that. We're not even close to it,” he stated in the audio.
According to André's analysis, what had been built in Agrolend's four years of existence was, in terms of generating economic value, "very close to zero." And the funding rounds had been possible because venture capital investors "bought into a dream."
Subsequently, according to the transcript, when discussing the need for aggressive changes to the business model, André added that it would "obviously involve treading on gray areas."
"To make a profit, it's not about working like we've done until now, it's about working like in other companies, 24 hours a day, killing ourselves to make it work. That's what we're going to start doing now, right?!" he said.
“Pushing everyone to their limits, going for it. Obviously stepping into gray areas, right?! If you don't do that, if you don't step into gray areas, don't take risks, aren't aggressive, and just play like we're playing here today, with everyone chilling, relaxed, doing our little thing, without making any profit, it's not going to work,” André concluded.
Valéria Bonadio was the director of compliance, risk, and internal controls at Agrolend, a position regulated by the Central Bank, and her responsibilities included "preventing, detecting, and addressing any deviations or non-conformities" in the financial institution's operations.
To create Agrolend Holding on December 24, 2020, she was responsible for the legal and regulatory structuring at the Central Bank, such as the Credit, Financing and Investment Company (SCFI) license, in addition to the company's incorporation at Jucesp (São Paulo State Commercial Registry). By statutory definition, the responsibility for investigating irregularities rested precisely with Valéria Bonadio.
According to the documents, after that meeting, a process to exclude the partner from Agrolend began. On February 28, the Glezer brothers blocked her access to the institutional email without warning.
In the following days, access to internal systems was cut off. And, on March 7th, an extrajudicial notification informed of his removal from all positions in the companies of the Agrolend Group, even before the corporate acts were formalized, according to time stamps in the documents attached to the case.
Appetite for agriculture
Founded with the goal of offering structured credit to agribusiness through technology and proprietary risk modeling, Agrolend quickly gained ground in a sector that combines high demand for financing and investors' appetite for exposure to agriculture.
Since 2022, the company has completed four funding rounds. In Series A, it raised approximately R$120 million with investors such as Valor Capital Group, Continental Grain Company, SP Ventures, Provence Capital, and Barn Invest. Subsequently, Series B totaled approximately R$145 million, led by Lightrock, with participation from investors who were already at the cap table.
In 2024, the company announced a Series C funding round of approximately US$53 million – around R$300 million at the time – led by Creation Investments and Syngenta Group Ventures. The round also included participation from Vivo Ventures, L4 Ventures, and Norinchukin Bank, a Japanese bank specializing in agribusiness, as well as investors who had previously contributed, such as Valor Capital, Lightrock, SP Ventures, and Yara Growth Ventures.
In addition, in 2025, there was a further extension of Series C with new funding, including resources from the Japanese agency JICA.
This Agrolend case goes beyond a corporate dispute between former partners. If the statements recorded in the audio are confirmed in court, they may indicate that venture capital funds made investment decisions based on financial information that did not reflect the company's operational reality.
There have been at least two unsuccessful attempts at settlement in an arbitration court. The case remains open and awaits judgment by the 2nd Reserved Chamber of Business Law of the TJSP (Court of Justice of São Paulo), under the reporting of Judge Grava Brazil.
Contacted by NeoFeed , Agrolend, brothers Alan and André Glezer and Valéria Bonadio sent the following statements to the reporter.
The law firm Modesto Carvalhosa, Kuyven e Ronco Advogados, representing partners Alan and André Glezer, wrote that "Agrolend informs that the aforementioned controversy refers to a lawsuit filed by a former administrator more than a year ago, which has already been reviewed by the Judiciary, with decisions in the first and second instances recognizing that this lawsuit is completely unfounded and confirming the regularity of the corporate acts performed by the company."
"The decisions related to the reorganization of functions were made at the time in accordance with the existing corporate instruments and the company's formal governance bodies."
"The company reaffirms that it has always acted in accordance with applicable accounting standards and with complete transparency towards investors and partners, as evidenced in the legal proceedings. Agrolend's financial information is public, audited, and available on the company's website."
The Mattos Filho law firm responded on behalf of Valéria Fontana Bonadio Bittencourt: “Regarding the corporate dispute involving Agrolend, we inform you that Ms. Valéria Bonadio's position is duly presented in her procedural submissions, and she trusts that the Judiciary will restore the truth of the facts and justice in the case.”
"Given the sensitivity of the subject and considering her status as a founder and shareholder of the company – with a legitimate interest in the solidity and continuity of the Agrolend Group – Ms. Valéria reserves the right not to comment publicly beyond what is already on record."
