Compliance Programmes For Brazilian Subsidiaries

The new Brazilian Anticorruption Law establishes severe punishment for companies that involve themselves in acts that are injurious to the government, especially corruption and frauds in government contracts. Liability extends to the partners, shareholders and administrators in general, to the extent of their culpability. It happens that blame is no longer linked to direct participation in the act that causes the damage, but rather to what was done of a preventive nature by those who had the duty to do everything necessary to combat corruption. Thus, in principle, it will not be sufficient to say that the administrator of a company did not know of an act of corruption that occurred in a given department, if this administrator had taken no steps to minimize the risk of such an occurrence.