Brasília – To offer gifts, presents, pay for trips or lodging to government employees – Brazilians or foreigners – can constitute illegal practices under the Anti-corruption Law. To avoid Brazilian companies to incur in mistakes like these abroad, the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) and the Brazilian Office of the Comptroller General (CGU) issued this Tuesday (28th) a guidebook that explains various intems of the legislation, especifically within the scope of the exporting agency.
In force since January 2014 and regulated in March of this year by President Dilma Rousseff, the Anti-corruption Law establishes strict liability, in either civil or administrative levels, of companies that incur in acts detrimental to the national or foreign public administration, with the intent to close the gaps in the Brazilian legal system, as well as to meet international commitments undertaken by Brazil.
“It outlaws the transnational bribery”, sums up the director of CGU’s Integrity Promotion in International Cooperation Agreements, Hamilton Fernando Cota Cruz. “Our commitment is to prevent and avoid that Brazilian companies pay briberies to foreign authorities, with the intent of closing business”, he added.
To offer bribe to Brazilian government officials was already considered a crime. What the new legislation does is to expand the punishments in the case this practice is done abroad. “We want the companies to be aware of the regulations they must follow, reason why we present [in the guidebook] mechanisms to be implemented by them to avoid this type of illegal payments. “
According to Cota Cruz, the law does not seek to place the blame in the person but in the company, which could have to pay fines of up to 20% of its annual gross revenues or three times the amount of the intended or obtained advantage – the ceiling will be the lower of these two amounts. “In the case of private individual, they will be responsible in the civil or criminal levels.”
According to the CGU’s representative, the law also establishes punishment for the company in the case of demonstrable unfair advantage obtained in an indirect way. “For instance, if a donation is made indirectly through a non-governmental organization (NGOs), relatives or people close to the foreign government employee”, explains the CGU’s director.
“It’s unnecessary to say that this guidebook is important. We should be alert because now we have a new law that regulates the contacts of our companies with foreign authorities, changing the relationships we had and altering the modus operandi from now on. It’s a great improvement for Brazil because it gives us tranquility to decide how to work, in addition to help us improve Brazil’s image abroad, so compromised by corruption”, added Apex’s president, David Barioni.
Patrícia Souto Audi, secretary of Transparency and Corruption Prevention in CGU, considers “healthy the questioning of Brazilian institutions” because of corruption accusations. “[These measures] represent a moment of strengthening of these institutions and the promotion, within them, of an ethical framework.”
The guidebook can be downloaded at http://arq.apexbrasil.com.br/portal/cartilha_anticorrupcao.pdf
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
