Batista helped broker Lula-Trump meeting,

SAO PAULO/BRASILIA:

Brazilian billionaire Joesley Batista, one of the owners of meatpacker, played a key role in arranging a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, scheduled for Thursday in Washington, one person with direct knowledge of the talks told Reuters.

A jet owned by the family's J&F company, which controls JBS, was due to fly from Colorado to Washington on Wednesday, according to plane tracking data from FlightAware.

The encounter between Lula and Trump has been in the works since January, when the two leaders spoke by phone, but had been put on the back burner as the White House shifted its focus to the war in Iran. Last week, however, U.S. officials reached out offering the meeting on Thursday.

The involvement of Batista in brokering the meeting underscores the growing power of business leaders in setting the agenda for the Trump administration.