Americans may be the target of class action lawsuits in the US

Law firms and investor representatives are already starting to plan a collective action in the United States against Americanas, along the lines of the process that earned Petrobras a fine of US$ 2.95 billion (R$ 10 billion at the exchange rate at the time) for losses after the Lava Jato operation.

Responsible for initiating the lawsuit against Petrobras, the Almeida Law office has already opened a call for investors affected by the meltdown in the value of Americanas shares after the announcement of an accounting scandal of R$ 20 billion in its balance sheet.

“We are facing a situation that could affect a chain of thousands of investors, suppliers, service providers, etc., of incalculable proportions, as happened with Petrobras when the actions of the Lava Jato operation broke out”, says the office. in text for investors.

The firm is looking for debenture holders, minority shareholders or holders of ADRs (receipts of Brazilian shares on the New York Stock Exchange) and says it is also planning a collective arbitration, to cover Brazilian investors.

The process is carried out in partnership with the American law firm Wolf Popper, which also acted in the Petrobras case. But the leadership of such an action still depends on other factors: in the case of the state-owned company, it ended up with a third firm, Pomerantz.

In Brazil, there is no institute of class action (collective action in the United States), nor the concept of class, according to which a group with similar characteristics is benefited in a process initiated by one of its representatives.

Adviser to Almeida Law in the search for investors against Americanas, Abradin (Brazilian Association of Investors) says that the collective arbitration process may seek compensation from Brazilians and that it also intends to initiate public civil action in the country’s courts.

“There are indications that Lojas Americanas was being robbed and this accounting fraud was masking the theft”, says the entity’s president, Aurélio Valporto. “It’s much more than accounting inconsistency. There is, in fact, massive fraud.”

Americanas did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations.

Abradin has already filed a complaint with the CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission) asking for an investigation of the responsibility of the company’s managers. Valporto also criticizes the performance of PwC, the company responsible for auditing Americanas’ finances.

He recalls that the company was also responsible for auditing Petrobras before the discovery of the corruption scheme by the Lava Jato operation and that it audited the IRB (Brazilian Reinsurance Institute), also the target of accounting fraud.

Sought by the report, PwC said it would not comment.

“Of two, one: either it is a highly corrupt company, which receives money to approve fraud; or it is an absolutely incompetent company”, he says. “In either case, it has already become clear that it has no competence to operate in Brazil.”

This Friday (13), Americanas became the target of a public civil action filed by Ibraci (Brazilian Institute of Citizenship), which seeks compensation from investors for moral and material damages caused by makeup of the financial balance sheet.

“Investors cannot and should not passively accept anomalous losses resulting from distorted behavior, non-compliance with governance rules, violation of market norms and manipulation”, says the institute’s action.