BRUSSELS — An Italian leather-maker owned by French luxury giant LVMH has purchased animal skins from Paraguayan companies tied to deforested land, according to an NGO investigation, even as its CEO pushes for exemptions under EU anti-deforestation rules.
Backed by some European lawmakers and government officials, industry lobbyists have been trying to convince the European Commission that leather should not be covered by new rules restricting imports of products tied to deforestation.
The sector claims it does not cause deforestation because leather is a meat-industry byproduct. Once animals are slaughtered, their skins would go to waste if they weren’t bought by tanneries to make products like bags, belts, and car seat covers, it argues.
Fabrizio Nuti — president and CEO of Nuti Ivo Group, an Italian tannery acquired three years ago by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, and president of Italy’s national tannery industry association — is a prominent voice in the campaign.
“If we cannot get the raw material that we need, we’re out of business — we are out, simply, overnight because we don’t have the information that is required,” Nuti told a recent event at the European Parliament, referring to the supply-chain data he would need to comply with the anti-deforestation rules. He insisted that South American skins only represent a fraction of the sector’s imports.
An investigation by NGO Global Witness, a campaign group that investigates the impact of business on the environment, shows that Nuti Ivo has worked with suppliers that have a high risk of causing deforestation across more than 100,000 hectares in Paraguay — including on land claimed by Indigenous communities. The investigation, shared exclusively with POLITICO, also finds that Nuti is part owner of a Paraguayan tannery shipping those skins to Nuti Ivo, the company of which he is CEO.
Both LVMH — which also owns Christian Dior, Tiffany & Co, and Sephora — and Nuti Ivo have said they do not source skins from South America. They cite a group-wide “commitment to halt any deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems, within both its operations and supply chains by 2025.”
But trade data from the global trade intelligence platform Export Genius shows one company in the Nuti Ivo Group was still receiving hides from a Paraguayan exporter as recently as January.
In 2025, tanneries belonging to the Nuti Ivo Group imported around 2,710 metric tons of leather from Paraguay, including cow and buffalo hides, worth about $3.8 million (€3.4 million), the data shows.
The findings show that “the leather companies, especially those that purchase from South America, are much more interested in maintaining business as usual and keeping the hides from these very high-risk countries flowing to Europe rather than actually taking the steps to address the root issue in their industry,” said Charlie Hammans, who led the investigation for Global Witness.
‘Very small quantities’
When first asked for comment on the investigation’s findings, LVMH said Nuti Ivo Group had adopted its policies of banning leather sourced from South America.
Yet when later presented with the export data, a spokesperson for the company said Nuti Ivo has “sourced very small quantities in South America as part of sourcing pre-existing its acquisition.”
LVMH acquired a majority stake in the Nuti Ivo Group in 2023 through its specialized artisan division LVMH Métiers d’Art.
The spokesperson made a distinction between LVMH brands — the “House” — and Métiers d’Art, which brings together LVMH’s key supply chains. He added that, since the acquisition of Nuti Ivo, it “has engaged in discussions with a view to the gradual cessation of these residual contracts.”
LVMH said it “has never undertaken any action to lobby EU institutions to reduce the scope of the EU Deforestation Regulation” and is “fully committed to combating deforestation.”
Fabrizio Nuti and the Nuti Ivo Group did not respond directly to multiple requests for comment. COTANCE, a leather industry association of which Nuti Ivo is a member, told Global Witness that Nuti Ivo “adopted the policies of the [LVMH] Group.”
The EU’s deforestation beef
The EU has been trying to address the massive deforestation caused by imports of commodities like beef, cocoa, or palm oil.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 90 percent of global forest loss is caused by forests being converted into farmland for crops or grazing. In South America, deforestation is also a social justice and human rights issue: Roughly 35 percent of Latin American forests are occupied by Indigenous peoples.
In 2023, Brussels passed a law banning the sale of products in the EU if they are linked to land anywhere that was cleared after December 2020. The law is due to come into force at the end of this year after multiple delays.
Animal skins for leather tied to deforested land should be restricted once the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) takes effect, but the Commission is expected to propose changes to the scope of the rules by the end of this month.
During a meeting in early April of lobbyists, lawmakers and government representatives in the European Parliament — hosted by Italian Socialists & Democrat MEP Dario Nardella — Nuti spoke passionately on the pitfalls of including leather products in the scope of the EU’s anti-deforestation law.
Tanners are giving “worth” and “new life” to leather, he said. People would not trade the skins, he argued, so leather itself cannot be a deforestation driver.
Environmental groups don’t buy it.
“Arbitrarily removing leather from the EUDR would lead to significant policy incoherence: the meat from a cow raised on deforested land would be prohibited, while the skin of that same animal could be sold freely in the single market,” a coalition of NGOs wrote in a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“Only by including all high-impact cattle products can the EU fulfill its commitment to ending its contribution to global deforestation,” said the green groups, which included Earthsight, Global Witness, ClientEarth and Human Rights Watch.
Traceability concerns
The Global Witness investigation examines the web of cattle farms supplying two major meat companies — Minerva Foods and Frigorífico Concepción — that run slaughterhouses in the Gran Chaco Forest, South America’s second-largest forest.
Paraguayan tannery Parpelli, owned by an exporting company called the Lecom group, buys animal skins from those meat companies. It then treats and ships the hides to countries including China, Vietnam, Portugal and Italy.
One buyer is the Italian tannery Conceria Everest, which is part of the LVMH-owned Nuti Ivo Group.
Global Witness has linked 16 farms that were supplying the meat companies as recently as 2023 to 110,000 hectares of deforested land since 2021, using trade data, satellite imagery, forestry databases and interviews with local farmers.
Fabrizio Nuti, the Nuti Ivo Group’s CEO, owns a 40 percent stake in Parpelli through his family holding company Finatan.
Trade data from Export Genius shows that in 2025, Nuti Ivo S.p.A and Everest Srl imported roughly 2,710 metric tons of leather worth about $3.8 million from Parpelli. Parpelli was also listed as one of the group’s international partners on Nuti Ivo’s website until March.
Global Witness argues in its investigation that Nuti Ivo’s supply chain traceability shows “major gaps,” because “it can only trace 45 percent of its hides to a specific slaughterhouse.”
In statements to Global Witness, Minerva Foods and Frigorífico Concepción did not confirm or deny that they still work with the 16 deforestation-linked farms. The companies did not reply to POLITICO’s requests for comment.
Lecom says it verifies that its suppliers’ “operations do not compromise local ecosystems or contribute to the deterioration of the environment, preserving the traceability of the product, the conservation of our forests today, and for future generations.”
The company exports 22 percent of its leather to the European market. Of this, 5 percent represents leather sourced from Frigorífico Concepción and 17 percent from Frigorífico Minerva, the company told Global Witness in a statement dated April 7. It added that it was working on “continuously improving existing [traceability] systems.”
The group did not respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.
While the data does not confirm that the specific skins purchased by Nuti Ivo from Parpelli came from cows from those 16 farms, Global Witness argues this puts LVMH’s supply chain at high risk of being exposed to deforestation.
Hammans, the author of the investigation, urged LVMH to join forces with other multinational companies calling on the European Commission to keep the deforestation law intact.
LVMH is “literally one of the largest companies in the world, and it’s the largest luxury company,” he said. “With all of their resources, they’ve got a responsibility to make sure that their subsidiaries are actually in line with their own policies and are not contributing to weakening a really important law to actually make sure that these promises are enforced.”
