01/10/2024 – 16:27
Twelve months after the biggest corporate scandal in the country, involving American stores, investigations into how the fraud was created and who was involved remain without conclusive answers. Recently, the current president of the company undergoing judicial recovery, Leonardo Coelhodeclared in an interview that the three reference shareholders – Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles It is Carlos Alberto Sicupira – has nothing to do with the crisis, which would have been triggered by irregularities committed by the company's executives, mainly those linked to the financial area.
Despite the vehemence of Coelho's defense (and accusations), there are still numerous open points in the investigations. Such gaps demonstrate that the attribution of responsibilities is much more complex than their declarations. Revelations that occurred during the fraud investigation indicate that banks recently incorporated as partners in the company, through a creditor agreement, were part of at least one highly controversial episode.
In April, the newspaper Valor revealed excerpts from a report by the retailer's judicial administrators, which indicated that at least two banks (Itaú Unibanco and Santander) had changed the information provided to external auditors about the existence of “drawn risk” operations from the retailer to suppliers in 2016. These operations are precisely behind the crisis the company embarked on, after the revelation, in January 2023, of “accounting inconsistencies”. Confronted at the time, the banks denied the changes and said that all information about the company was made available to institutions responsible for these controls.
In another controversial episode, revealed in June, in the middle of one of the CPI sessions that investigated the case (and which was closed without presenting any effective conclusion), it was pointed out
dubious operations linked to suppliers involving in-store product promotion contracts (VCPs). During the maneuvers, the values were artificially inflated as a way of covering up the losses of the retail chain. At CPI, Carla Bellangero, partner at KPMG in Brazil, who obtained all confirmations directly from suppliers.
A new source of controversy was the episode of the plea bargain of two former Americanas executives, the former financial director Marcelo Nunes and the company's former Controllership superintendent Flavia Carneiro. Both had a much more advantageous dismissal regime from the company than their peers, all of whom were dismissed for just cause and without the right to compensation. The executives' statements made to the Federal Public Ministry of Rio de Janeiro (MPF-RJ) mainly focus on the participation of the company's former CEO, Miguel Gutierrez, and other executives in the fraud.
The connection between the retailer and the Nunes and Carneiro whistleblower process was the subject of a question from Banco Safra to the retailer's director of investor relations, Camille Loyo Faria. Based on information disclosed in a statement to the market in September, the bank asked whether the company was having undue access to confidential information from the whistleblower process.
In addition to the investigation procedures conducted by the MPF-RJ, investigations are ongoing by an independent audit committee constituted by the company, the Federal Police and the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM). A year after revelations came to light that forever shook Brazilian capitalism, the Americanas fraud is still a long way from being completely clarified.
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