In Santander’s action against Americanas, Justice suspends seizure of emails – 02/03/2023 – Market

Judge Paulo Rogério Santos Pinheiro, of the 43rd Civil Court of São Paulo, temporarily suspended this Friday (3) the search and seizure of institutional emails from directors and advisors in the areas of accounting and finance at Americanas.

The provisional decision that determined the apprehension of the material for the carrying out of expertise met a request from the Santander bank, a creditor of R$ 3.65 billion with the retail chain.

According to this Friday’s decision, the search and seizure began on Tuesday (31). However, Americanas informed in the process that the decision was too generic, risking “extrapolation of the limits of the decision”.

For Judge Paulo Rogério Pinheiro, it is necessary to define the extent of the search and seizure, specifying the names with institutional emails to be seized. The delimitation, according to the magistrate, will avoid unnecessary work if there is the collection of data from people unrelated to the control activities.

Americanas told the court that Santander’s request, as it was done, would generate an extraordinary volume of data, much of it unnecessary. This could, according to the retailer, make the search and seizure take weeks or months, “to the detriment of Americanas’ business activities, in a difficult moment in which it needs to manage efforts for its recovery.”

The work done so far on Americanas’ computers will remain in court. According to this Friday’s decision, the experts sealed computers, disconnected them from remote servers and blocked machines with a password and seal in the rooms.

“The measures taken by the expert seem sufficient to prevent the frustration of the measure, with the definitive deletion of ’email’ boxes or messages, including the use of sophisticated mechanisms to prevent the recovery of deleted digital files (software that rewrites empty spaces after deletion files)”, wrote the judge in the decision.

Santander’s defense has 48 hours to list the names of directors and board members whose emails should be seized; in the case of employees, the period may reach five days.

In addition to Santander, Bradesco and Safra banks also sought the Judiciary with actions for the early production of evidence. They want the communications expertise to attest to the retail giant’s management fraud.