Former Petrobras director pays BRL 480,000 to end price policy lawsuit

Former Petrobras chief financial officer Rafael Grisolia reached an agreement with the CVM (Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission) to end a lawsuit that questioned a change in the company’s fuel pricing policy in April 2019.

The executive, now at Seacrest Petróleo, agreed to pay BRL 480,000, in an agreement that does not involve an assumption of guilt, but files a lawsuit filed in 2021 by the body responsible for overseeing the Brazilian capital market.

He was accused of changing the frequency of the company’s pricing policy without officially informing investors. The change allowed the company to keep prices below international quotations, as long as it recovered any losses in the following quarters.

The process was opened after a complaint by Abicom (Brazilian Association of Fuel Importers), when it realized that Petrobras had been charging lower prices for longer periods than in previous administrations.

The import parity policy, which provides for the monitoring of international fuel prices, was instituted in 2016, during the Michel Temer government, and became a target of the Bolsonaro government with the rise in current prices.

Despite saying he has no autonomy to set Petrobras’ prices, Bolsonaro changed three company presidents to try to assuage questions from voters and opponents and reverse negative impacts on his popularity.

The current president, Caio Paes de Andrade, took office at the end of June with the mission of trying to hold prices in the electoral period, a mission facilitated today by the decline in international oil prices. The government is still trying to renew the company’s board, to have a more aligned management.

Grisolia was the only defendant in the CVM’s lawsuit that evaluated the policy change in 2019. The CVM’s technical area noted that previous communiqués said that the previous policy provided that prices would “never be lower” than the import parity.

“By not disclosing FR [fato relevante]when the price policy was changed, the Company may have left investors believing that prices would never be below parity, although there were mechanisms allowing prices to remain stable for 15 days”, said the autarchy.

The company claimed that “there was no material fact to be disclosed, as there was no change in the principles of the pricing policy”, but the argument was not accepted by the CVM.

The change in policy took place shortly after interference that led the company to withdraw from the readjustment of the price of diesel oil at the request of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), an episode that also led to an investigation by the CVM on Grisolia.

Also in that case, the executive made an agreement to close the process, paying R$ 300 thousand. The CVM questioned the lack of disclosure of a notice to the market about the decision.

The fuel price policy has already been the subject of another CVM lawsuit, which investigated the role of the board of directors to hold prices, causing damage to the company, during the Dilma Rousseff government. The process ended without convictions.