Americanas: CPI prepares breach of confidentiality of former directors – 06/14/2023 – Market

Americanas’ CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) is preparing to break the bank, tax and telematic secrecy of the company’s former directors involved in the fraud of the company’s balance sheets. Applications will be voted on and approved as early as next Tuesday (20).

The decision was taken at an administrative meeting this Wednesday (14). Parliamentarians should also listen to BC (Central Bank) and CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission) on the subject.

The objective of the CPI is to gather enough elements to later listen to former directors and the audits that endorsed Americanas’ balance sheets. The idea is to try to summon the first former company executives in early July, before the parliamentary recess.

“We will summon directors and auditors when we have elements”, summarized the president of the CPI, deputy Gustinho Ribeiro (Republicanos-SE).

The CEO of Americanas, Leonardo Coelho Pereira, testified this Tuesday (13) to the CPI and brought elements that indicate the supposed active participation of the board in the fraud of the company’s results.

Other documents also point to a possible connivance of PwC and KPMG audits, who discussed with the then board how to soften the terms used in their documents.

Pereira pondered, however, that it would be necessary to deepen the investigation in relation to the two audits to understand whether or not there was collusion between them and Americanas. He classified the dialogues as a “point of attention”.

The revelations increased pressure to recall the directors and the two companies.

Wanted on Tuesday (13) by SheetKPMG in Brazil said that, “for reasons of secrecy clauses and rules of the profession, it is prevented from expressing itself on cases involving clients or former clients of the firm”.

PwC said in a note that “it does not comment on client issues due to confidentiality and professional secrecy rules”.

The CPI also intends to approve a request requesting the completeness of the documents that supported the report presented on Tuesday.

The CEO of Americanas, hired after the scandal came to light and with the company already in judicial recovery, presented to the CPI alleged emails and WhatsApp conversations in which the former directors spoke openly about the fraud.

In an email sent by former executive Marcelo Nunes, former financial director of Americanas, to the entire board of the company at the time, a balance sheet called “internal view”, shows a loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for 2021 of BRL 733 million.

Another document in the same message exchange titled “advisory vision” brings a profit for the same item of almost R$ 2.9 billion. That was the number presented to the market.

“Between the internal view and the board’s view, R$ 3.5 billion in results were created. Americanas fraud is a result fraud”, summarized Pereira.

The Americanas scandal began in January of this year, when the then CEO Sergio Rial issued a material fact indicating the existence of accounting inconsistencies of approximately R$ 20 billion in the company’s balance sheets, after which he resigned. He had been in office for less than two weeks.

The term “accounting inconsistencies” was used until this Tuesday, when Americanas issued a new material fact treating the case as a fraud.