A Brazilian Supreme Court justice has granted a request to seize documents and emails exchanged by executives of Americanas, the giant retail company embroiled in what is arguably Brazil’s biggest accounting scandal ever. Only correspondence between the company and its lawyers is protected from the ruling (which overturned a lower court’s decision).
The request was made by major private bank Bradesco, a financial creditor of Americanas. The bank suspects the retailer, which has been under bankruptcy protection since mid-January, of accounting fraud. Early in 2023, the company reported “inconsistencies” in its books; it had failed to properly log tens of billions of reais in debt.
Bradesco wrote in the petition that the measure is necessary “to expose once and for all the vile opportunism” that marks Americanas’s stance so far. The federation of Brazilian banks expressed its support for Bradesco.
This morning, Americanas proposed a higher capital increase of up to BRL 12 billion to appease its financial creditors. The move comes a week after the retailer unveiled its recovery plan to its thousands of creditors, which have until April 19 to analyze it. If Bradesco discovers new information by then, it could halt negotiations altogether.
Since January 11, when the scandal came to light, Americanas shares have fallen 91.96 percent.
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