Tag Archives: Clean Company Act

Civil Non-Prosecution Agreements: A Promising New Tool for Advancing Brazil’s Anticorruption Agenda

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In late 2019, the Brazilian Congress passed an “anti-crime package” which included, among other things, an amendment to the Administrative Improbity Act that authorized a new form of “civil non-prosecution agreement” (known by its Portuguese initials, ANPC). Under an ANPC, prosecutors can reach civil agreements with individuals who voluntarily disclose their corrupt acts, thus avoiding the usual judicial proceedings for determining penalties under the Improbity Law. (To be clear, ANPCs are used to resolve civil matters and impose administrative sanctions, rather than to resolve criminal cases.) More recent amendments to the Improbity Act have strengthened this mechanism by giving prosecutors greater discretion to reach settlements with individuals accused of improbity.

This reform is a major change to the traditional Brazilian approach to administrative sanctions, which historically bars the settlement of any case involving corruption or improbity. That said, Brazil has already expanded the use of settlement agreements in other contexts. For example, in the context of enforcing criminal laws against corporations, the 2014 Clean Company Act (CCA) authorized so-called “leniency agreements,” under which prosecutors may offer to lower penalties to companies that self-disclosure wrongdoing and cooperate with the investigation. The ANPC mechanism is similar but different in a couple of important respects. First, the ANPC applies to individuals rather than firms. Second, while the CCA authorizes leniency agreements only in cases where the company discloses information about other unlawful activities and thus helps the investigation, an ANPC may be issued as long as the individual agrees to reform her own conduct, even if she does not provide additional information that is useful in ongoing investigations. On the other hand, similarly to leniency agreements, the enforcement authorities need not seek judicial approval to resolve a case via ANPC, so long as the agreement is reached before the beginning of a judicial proceeding. (If a formal proceeding has already begun, then the judge would still need to sign off on the termination of that proceeding.)

Although ANPCs have yet to be used on large scale, this tool holds great promise for substantially improving Brazil’s effective enforcement of its anticorruption laws, for several reasons:

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Brazil Should Rethink the Corporate Death Penalty for Corrupt Acts

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Brazil’s Clean Company Act (CCA), enacted during a time of mass protests against corruption and impunity, was a major step forward in the fight against corporate crime. While the CCA is best known for its imposition of strict civil and administrative liability on legal entities that commit corrupt acts against public administration, the CCA is also notable for its authorization, in extreme cases, of a “corporate death penalty.” More specifically, the CCA requires the dissolution of a corporation or other legal entity when (1) the legal entity is in fact a “shell company” used to conceal illegal acts (such as money laundering, tax evasion, or procurement fraud), or (2) the legal entity was used on a regular basis to facilitate or promote the performance of wrongful acts. Applying the corporate death penalty to shell companies created for the purpose of facilitating or concealing criminal acts is straightforward and not terribly controversial, especially since these shell companies do not engage in any genuine productive activity. The controversy arises with respect to the second category, which can include productive companies.

Applying the extreme sanction of corporate dissolution might seem like appropriately strong medicine for companies, even productive companies, that have been involved in serious and ongoing illegality. In practice, however, this sanction is not working as intended. A much more effective and realistic sanction, at least in the Brazilian context, would be to compel a persistently corrupt (but productive) company’s shareholders to sell their controlling stake in the company—thus preserving the company as a going concern, but placing it under new ownership and management.

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The Shortcomings of the Leniency Agreement Provisions of Brazil’s Clean Company Act

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If the CEO of a corporation operating in Brazil learns that her company has committed an unlawful act of corruption, should she order the corporation to self-report and negotiate a leniency agreement with the Brazilian authorities under Brazil’s 2013 Clean Company Act, which authorizes such settlements? In most of the cases, the corporate legal department would probably advise against it. Indeed, the number of leniency agreements based specifically on Brazil’s Clean Company Act has been much smaller than expected.

Several factors drive companies away from cooperating with Brazilian public authorities under the Clean Company Act:

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Requiring Public Contractors To Have Anticorruption Compliance Programs May Sound Like a Good Idea—But Not When Government Capacity Is Lacking

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Five years ago, in a thought-provoking post, Rick Messick proposed that developing states should demand that firms doing business with them have an anticorruption compliance program. At the time Rick wrote his post, he wasn’t aware of any developing state that had imposed any such requirement. A couple of years later, some Brazilian subnational jurisdictions, such as the state of Rio de Janeiro and the Federal District, adopted legislation in this spirit, requiring that companies awarded a public contract, or participating in a public-private partnership, above a certain value must establish an anticorruption compliance program. These initiatives seem to be of a piece with a broader trend in Brazilian anticorruption law, which has sought in various ways to create stronger incentives for companies to adopt effective compliance programs. (For example, Brazil’s 2013 Clean Company Act holds companies strictly liable for corrupt conduct, but companies that have a so-called “integrity program” may get a penalty reduction.)

Nonetheless, despite the importance of corporate compliance policies as a component of any effective anticorruption strategy (see here and here), demanding that contractors to establish such programs as a condition of doing business with Brazilian government entities is unlikely to achieve the intended goals.

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Leniency Agreements Under Brazil’s Clean Company Act: Are They a Good Idea?

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Brazil’s 2013 Clean Company Act, the country’s first anti-bribery statute applicable to companies, has grabbed Brazilians’ attention due to its recurrent use in the context of the so-called Car Wash operation. The Clean Company Act has provided the main legal basis for Brazilian public authorities (especially federal prosecutors) to sign leniency agreements with construction corporations whose top executives stand accused of bribing officials in exchange for contracts from Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil giant. Under the Act, Brazilian authorities may enter into a leniency agreement as long as the company admits its participation in the illicit act, ceases any further participation, provides full restitution for damage caused, and cooperates fully and permanently with the ongoing investigation. In exchange, the fines can be reduced by up to two-thirds and, more importantly, the cooperating company may be exempted from judicial and administrative sanctions, including suspension or debarment from public contracts. Over the course of the Car Wash investigation, Brazilian authorities have already signed five leniency agreements with some of Brazil’s largest engineering firms, and at least twelve more companies are currently negotiating leniency deals with Brazilian authorities.

But do these sorts of leniency agreements provide for sufficient deterrence of corrupt behavior? And are they consistent with the interest in punishing those companies that have committed a serious crime? Those who defend Brazil’s increasing use of leniency agreements emphasize that a similar approach has proven to be effective in countries like the United States, one of the most successful countries in the world in the fight against corruption. Indeed, the leniency agreements authorized by the Clean Company Act were modeled on the Non-Prosecution Agreements (NPAs) and Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) used by US authorities in white-collar criminal law enforcement. However, Brazil is following the US model precisely at a time when the widespread use of NPAs and DPAs is becoming more controversial, in part because of concerns that these sorts of agreements fail to deter economic crimes and allow high-ranking executives to escape accountability for their crimes (for a summary of the criticisms of those agreements, see here and here). Perhaps more importantly, even if one views the US experience with NPAs and DPAs as successful overall, there are several reasons why this model might be more problematic in the Brazilian context. Continue reading →