Lava Jato prestige remains high among Brazilian executives, says survey

A survey released this weekend by Quaest in partnership with Transparency International pointed out that 64% of Brazilian executives still evaluate the anti-corruption work carried out during Operation Lava Jato as positive, even with the setbacks faced in recent years.

The survey, which heard 100 executives from the 250 largest Brazilian companies between the 12th and 28th of July, shows that 83% of them believe that the anti-corruption operations of recent years have reduced the feeling of impunity.

Furthermore, the survey revealed that 93% of them consider that the operations brought positive consequences for the companies, such as the change in the mechanisms and standards of corporate integrity.

On the other hand, 91% of the executives interviewed by Quaest considered that the integrity systems in Brazilian companies today are “immature” even with the instruments brought by the Anti-Corruption Law, such as leniency agreements, strict liability of legal entities and the incentive to adopt systems of compliance.

Bruno Brandão, executive director of Transparência Internacional Brasil, says that the Anti-Corruption Law has brought Brazil on a par with the most modern legislation in the world, causing a revolution in the private sector with the dissemination of mechanisms and a culture of compliance that did not exist before.

“But the executives themselves recognize that integrity systems are still immature and their effectiveness depends, on the one hand, on positive incentives, such as the support of top leadership in companies and, on the other, on the ability to enforcement authorities,” he said in an interview with CNN Brazil.

Enforcement it is the effective control of the investigative bodies, which divided the executives interviewed by the survey when analyzing the results obtained in the last five years. For 36% of them, the authorities’ control has remained stable, while only 28% see it having increased in recent years.

For executives, 57% consider that the law did little to develop compliance in small and medium-sized companies, while 42% consider that it helped a lot. Only 1% consider that it did not help at all in this regard.

Executives also assess that loosening the State-owned Law creates a high risk of affecting the compliance of public companies (71%). For 87% of them, Brazil’s entry into the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, also known as the “club of the rich”, could help raise the standards of business administration.

Brazil’s entry into the OECD was one of the main goals of the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), but it has not gained prominence in the new government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).