Global Investigations Review – GIR’s Americas Investigations Review 2021 - Brazil: Internal Investigations and Cooperation with Enforcement Authorities

Global Investigations Review – GIR published back in October, the Americas Investigations Review 2021, one of the guide’s special reports. Our partners Michel Sancovski and Luis Adams, and associate Liliana Mascarenhas were the authors of the chapter “Brazil: Internal Investigations and Cooperation with Enforcement Authorities”, focusing on the concepts related to anti-corruption enforcement, in which there is the cooperation of ompanies with enforcement authorities with the expectation to mitigate sanctions for potential violations. While the Brazilian Anti-Corruption Law provides cooperation as a mitigating factor, the criteria and parameters for its recognition are not clearly developed and companies trying to cooperate with Brazilian authorities face some challenges. A thorough internal investigation may assist companies to cooperate, but this mechanism is not regulated and expressly recognized in Brazil. In the United States, both the concept and criteria for cooperation and the importance of internal investigations are clearer and the benefits are noticeable in the results that US authorities achieve in resolution with companies. In this chapter, we present a parallel between the Brazilian and the American enforcement systems to consider the possibilities for Brazil to improve its anti-corruption enforcement.