In the second panel, North American lawyer William “Bill` Burck, managing partner of the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart and Sullivan, explained in Washington D.C. a brief explanation of how clemency agreements work in his country. There is a lot of flexibility, there are not too many legal requirements that limit what can and cannot be done,” he said. When negotiating an agreement with the Ministry of Justice (DOJ) corresponding to the Ministério Péblico Federal in Brazil, the priority of companies is to avoid an admission of guilt. “When a company admits criminal behaviour, the legal and financial consequences are very serious. In some cases, it can ruin a business in the markets where it operates,” he said. This is what happened with Arthur Andersen, one of the top five audit firms in the United States, before being convicted of obstruction of justice in the Enron case in the early 2000s. Years later, the conviction was overturned in the Supreme Court, but the company never managed to regain its previous position. Luis Wielewicki of Sampaio Ferraz Advogados in Sao Paulo said: “It`s like an annex. An individual is bound by the leniency of the company, which is different from any other jurisdiction I know.
Brazil`s Anti-Corruption Act No. 12.846 of August 1, 2013, known abroad as the Clean Company Act, provided an important tool to help authorities investigate and investigate evidence, a so-called leniency agreement. Hey, Megan. I will try to answer all of your important questions and apologize for their brevity, as an appropriate response would require more than a brief response to a comment. 1) I think the two alternatives are right. The settlement of corruption offences is a complex issue and each of the most important public bodies has constitutional obligations and responsibilities, so coordination is not easy. But I also think we are arguing about competence and power. 2) The Clean Company Act was passed to implement some of the commitments the country made when it joined the OECD anti-corruption agreement, and Brazil has already fulfilled this commitment too late.
In addition, the authorization came in response to a wave of protests across the country, which occurred in 2013, including several different social demands. This was not the best scenario for the implementation of incentives in relation to leniency agreements. 3) The same law applies to foreign companies operating in Brazil where the foreign legal entity has a branch or representation on the territory of Brazil, which is likely to apply to any company operating regularly in the country.