CVM opens new process and encourages complaints about Americanas

The CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission) opened a new process to investigate the Americanas accounting scandal and highlighted on its website a shortcut to complaints about the company. Now, there are five investigations into the case.

The most recent process was opened by the superintendence for monitoring companies and is aimed at disclosing news, material facts and announcements. The CVM does not give details about the investigation.

Another four lawsuits were opened last week, after the news that the company’s balance sheet failed to account for debts of R$ 20 billion, starting a crisis that brought down the value of the company’s shares.

One of them is confidential, but was opened by an area that investigates market manipulation. Among the public processes, one also assesses compliance with disclosure rules by the company and another analyzes the company’s financial disclosures.

Last week’s fourth lawsuit was filed following a complaint by Abradin (Brazilian Association of Investors) against the management of Lojas Americanas and the company responsible for auditing its finances, PwC.

The president of Abradin, Aurélio Valporto, questioned in an interview with Sheet the performance of the audit, which also audited Petrobras’ balance sheets in the period investigated by Operation Lava Jato and the IRB (Brazilian Reinsurance Institute), also investigated for accounting fraud.

This Tuesday (17th), the CVM decided to highlight on its website a shortcut to the system for denouncing irregularities in the financial market, with a banner indicating the link to “receive denouncements related to recent facts involving the publicly-held company Americanas SA”.

The autarchy also says that interested parties can report anonymously in a specific area of ​​the website for this purpose.

Americanas shares plummeted by almost 40% after the disclosure of the accounting scandal, which also started a legal battle between the company and its biggest creditors and the resignation of the company’s president, Sergio Rial, just nine days after his inauguration.

On Monday, S&P Global downgraded Americanas’ credit rating from “B” (on the global scale) and “brA-” (on the Brazilian national scale) to “D”, which means a default situation.

The company is the target of a lawsuit filed by Ibraci (Brazilian Citizenship Institute) and law firms are already starting to plan a collective action in the United States, 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.