Prates, nominated for Petrobras, says he will leave companies in the oil sector

Nominated by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) for the presidency of Petrobras, Senator Jean Paul Prates (PT-RN) said this Thursday (5) that he will leave consulting and oil extraction companies in which he was listed as a partner before taking office at the state-owned company.

The senator appears as a partner of at least three companies, according to data from the Federal Revenue Service and the Commercial Boards of Rio Grande do Norte and Rio de Janeiro: Carcará Petróleo, Singleton Participações Imobiliárias and Bioconsultants.

Prates’ nomination for the command of Petrobras raised questions about possible conflicts with the State-owned Law, legislation created in 2016 to shield public companies from political and economic interests.

The senator’s participation in companies in the oil sector will be evaluated by Petrobras’ Eligibility Committee, the sector in charge of presenting a report on the curriculum of candidates for the Board of Directors.

The State-Owned Companies Law prohibits the appointment of persons to the board of directors and boards of directors who have a contract or partnership with the company for a period of less than three years prior to the appointment. It also prohibits the appointment of a person who may have “any form of conflict of interest” with the company’s parent company.

In a note, Petrobras said that none of the three companies in which Prates appears as a partner has contracts signed with a state-owned company. And he highlighted that the nomination of the senator will be submitted to internal governance procedures for analysis of integrity and eligibility.

Carcará Petróleo, created in 2000 to operate in the oil and natural gas extraction segment, even participated in auctions of mature wells by the ANP (National Petroleum Agency), but was unsuccessful. This was the case, for example, of the auction for the Morro do Barro block, on Ilha de Itaparica (BA), which took place in 2005.

The senator is also one of the partners of Singleton Participações Imobiliárias, a company opened in 2008 as a business management consultancy. Singleton appears in the Federal Revenue as a partner of Carcará and Bioconsultants.

Bioconsultants, a consultancy in natural resources and the environment, is listed as active in the Federal Revenue, but had an announced merger with the company CRN in 2015, giving rise to CRN-Bio.

Prates does not appear as a partner at CRN-Bio, which provides consultancy for environmental impact studies, archeology and geoprocessing, mainly in large wind and solar energy projects.

In a note, Prates informed that he will leave the companies Carcará Petróleo and Bioconsultants. He will remain a partner only in Singleton, the company that manages his properties.

“There is no legal or compliance need for him to remain or not as a partner in these ventures. However, as transparency has always been a principle defended in the public life of Jean Paul Prates, he decided to disconnect from the corporate structure of these companies ,” said his adviser.

The senator has also worked at Expetro, a consultancy in the oil area. The company has been inoperative since 2015, the year it last issued an invoice, according to the advisory. The petista has already left his membership.

The State-Owned Companies Law has been an obstacle to nominations for positions on directorates and councils of state-owned companies in recent years. In 2022, the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government even nominated consultant Adriano Pires for the presidency of Petrobras, but he withdrew from the position.

At the time, there was a fear of conflict of interests, which could stop the nomination. Pires works at CBIE (Centro Brasileiro de Infraestrutura), recognized for providing consultancy services on strategic matters for the energy sector.

According to lawyer Bernardo Strobel Guimarães, doctor in state law and professor at PUCPR (Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná), there are generic passages in the legislation that open up room for interpretation in episodes like that of Prates.

“The existence or not of conflict needs to be considered in the concrete case. [do indicado] operate? Is the person actually ahead of them? State-owned companies have councils that assess situations and verify whether or not there is a conflict,” says Guimarães, who is the author of a book on the State-Owned Companies’ Law.

“A priori, you cannot respond to that by simply participating, without considering whether the company is inactive or not. It is a situation that needs to be evaluated by the committee”, he adds.

Prates’ promise to dispose of previous deals is seen as an attempt to ward off possible disputes within Petrobras. On the state-owned company’s website, it is possible to consult the oil company’s contract base, and its companies do not appear among the partners.

For Ana Paula Ávila, coordinator of the compliance area at Silveiro Advogados, the dismissal of Prates from the corporate structure of the companies is a first step to overcome this situation.

“But, you see, it’s only the first [passo] because conflict situations will arise in day-to-day decisions, when private interests conflict with those of the company, or in the use of privileged information”, he ponders.

There are also questions about possible conflicts between the State-Owned Companies Law and the political activities of the senator, who contested the 2020 and 2022 elections. election campaign.

“It would be necessary to establish whether he is a statutory leader of a political party and to what extent he ‘worked’ in structuring his campaign for the Senate or if he was the electoral coordinator himself, and it is necessary to know this information to confirm a possible prohibition”, says Ana Paula Ávila .

The last president of Petrobras appointed by Bolsonaro was Caio Paes de Andrade, who decided to leave the state company to take a position in the government of São Paulo. With the departure, João Henrique Rittershaussen was named interim president of Petrobras until the confirmation of the new commander.