Deloitte and EY refuse to audit Americanas emails – 01/31/2023 – Market

The auditing firms EY and Deloitte refused a request by the São Paulo Court to examine the computers of Americanas executives to produce evidence in the lawsuit filed by Bradesco against the retailer, which is currently undergoing judicial recovery.

Both claimed a conflict of interest. EY told the court that it had already been hired by Americanas to compose an independent committee for investigations into the crisis. Deloitte said only that it follows “internal guidelines”.

EY had been the first to be nominated by judge Andréa Galhardo Palma, from the 2^The Corporate Court of the Court of Justice of São Paulo, to monitor the due diligence on the retailer’s computers. Appointed as an expert in the case, attorney Patrícia Punder accepted the mission.

The judge authorized searches in all institutional email boxes of directors, members of the Board of Directors and the Audit Committee and employees of the accounting and finance areas —both current ones and those who have held these positions in the last ten years.

Americanas appealed the decision, claiming that the case is already being investigated by the competent authorities and that the audit of the emails creates the risk of leaking the privacy of third parties unrelated to the case to the press.

In response to the appeal, the lawyers representing Bradesco alleged that “Americanas was the stage for one of the biggest accounting frauds in the private sector” and asked that the request be denied by the judge.

The emails are also the target of the CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission), which opened a series of processes to investigate the crisis at the retailer. Two of them have already become surveys, which represents progress in the investigations.

They investigate the use of privileged information in the sale of company shares before the outbreak of the crisis and accounting irregularities in the company.

Minorities question whether the operations were carried out with knowledge of the company’s real situation, which came to light on January 11, when then-president Sergio Rial announced “accounting inconsistencies” in the amount of R$ 20 billion.