Americanas: President of CVM encourages whistle blowing – 06/20/2023 – Market

The president of the CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission), João Pedro do Nascimento, encouraged those involved in the Americanas fraud to negotiate agreements with the body in order to provide more information about the case. In such cases, whistleblowers can have their penalties reduced.

“I want to encourage those involved to collaborate with the CVM, contribute with award-winning statements, in the certainty that they will be looked upon with good eyes by the autarchy”, he said during a public hearing of the CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) of Americanas this Tuesday (20).

The CVM already has 16 ongoing proceedings related to Americanas’ accounting fraud. Of these, two have already turned into administrative inquiries. One analyzes the problems with the company’s accounting entries. The other is the sale of Americanas shares by the company’s executives and shareholders starting in August 2022, before the fraud scandal came to light and brought down the company’s value on the stock exchange.

According to the president, the municipality “has already started to question strategic people” within the framework of the procedures, but even so he did not give deadlines for the conclusion of the investigations.

Asked about the possibility of investigating the trio of reference shareholders of Americanas, the businessmen Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira, the CVM president limited himself to saying that he will investigate the involvement of “directors, directors and eventually the shareholders”. “We are also attentive to independent audits,” he added.

The case became public in January of this year when Americanas issued a Material Fact regarding accounting inconsistencies in the company’s balance sheet. Last Tuesday (13), Americanas published a new material fact in which it began to treat the case as accounting fraud.

The conclusion was based on a report prepared by Americanas, in which the blame for the fraud is placed on the former board.

Despite encouraging agreements, Nascimento said that the CVM cannot issue anticipated opinions on the case. “The CVM would never anticipate conclusions, nominate people, even in some cases already having elements of authorship”, he said after being questioned about the report.

He pointed out that Americanas had several layers of control above the board, such as the board of directors and external auditors whose role is to oversee cases like this.

“[Houve] very serious flaws both in the corporate structure and in the provision of information”, he evaluated. “We are facing a complex and daring fraud scheme involving several people”, he added.

Regarding external audits and other inspection bodies, he pondered that, in cases of fraud, the culprits deliberately try to deceive other bodies, which makes their actions difficult.

The CPI left for next week the vote on requests requesting documents and data on the case. The strategy is to gather information before calling on former Americanas executives involved in the case.

A request from Deputy Alberto Mourão (MDB-SP) requesting information on the remuneration and earnings of the board of directors, Board of Directors and Audit Committee and of Americanas’ controlling shareholders in the last ten years must be approved.

Another request, made by Deputy Tarcísio Motta (PSOL-RJ) asks for the complete documents that supported the report presented by Americanas in the last session. Only the presentation was sent to the CPI.