The House select committee looking into the case of fraud in retail giant Americanas on Tuesday approved by an 18-8 vote a report that does not point fingers at any culprits.
In January, the floundering retail giant had reported “accounting inconsistencies” of BRL 21.7 billion (USD 4.3 billion), only to admit BRL 43 billion in short-term liabilities one week later — and subsequently file for bankruptcy protection.
In a securities filing back in June, the Americanas holding company admitted that its executives defrauded the balance sheets of retailer Lojas Americanas for an extended period of time.
The select committee, which started work in May, also failed to take a vote on motions to subpoena Americanas’ reference shareholders — the billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles, and Carlos Alberto Sicupira — who own about 30 percent of the company.
Congresswoman Fernanda Melchionna of the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) said that she “deeply regretted” the “embarrassment” the select committee was going through. Leaders of political parties replaced committee members at the last minute to improve the chances of the report being approved, she said.
The moves were an attempt, she said, “to shield the reference shareholders, [and] to shield the banks that are implicated in that fraud with tampered accounting documents.” Ms. Melchionna added sarcastically that the report will have suited the lawyers of the billionaire shareholders or the current management at Americanas. “We cannot embarrass the gods of Brazilian capitalism,” she quipped.
Members of Brazil’s two largest parties were split on the report. Three members of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) voted against the report, and two voted in favor. In a rare occurrence, Workers’ Party members also split their votes, with two voting against the report and one in favor.
Congressman João Carlos Bacelar of the PL called the Americanas case “the largest qualified robbery” in Brazil, caused by “the greedy action of the greatest gangsters in the country’s history.”
As The Brazilian Report revealed in August, Cristiano Zanin, the Supreme Court’s newest justice, only dropped the Americanas case as an attorney days before taking office. He was announced as the lawyer for the retail giant in late January, weeks after the scandal broke. At the time, his nomination to the Supreme Court was already considered highly likely.
After the vote, the committee’s chair, Congressman Gustinho Ribeiro, said that the lawmakers could have caused “impacts” on the Brazilian economy and the stock market if they had acted “radically.”
Congressman Carlos Chiodini, the committee’s rapporteur, told lawmakers that “there is no evidence and there was no time for us to be inquisitors, to play the role of police, judge and prosecutor” — not that he made much of an effort to do so.
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