Union centrals go to court to block personal assets of trio of billionaires from Americanas

Trade union centrals and confederations filed a public civil action this Wednesday (25) asking the Court to block R$ 1.53 billion from the personal account of Americanas’ reference shareholders —the billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Beto Sicupira and Marcel Telles—, as a way to ensure that the ongoing labor claims against the retailer will be paid.

As the banks did this week, the request aims to disregard the legal personality of Americanas, directly blaming the trio for the accounting scandal.

The exceptional mechanism is provided for by law and consists of ignoring the company’s patrimonial autonomy, in case of abusive or fraudulent conduct, so that its shareholders pay for damages with their own assets.

The preliminary injunction was filed with the 8th Labor Court of Brasília, and is signed by eight entities: CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores), UGT (General Union of Workers), CTB (Central dos Trabalhadores e Trabalhadores do Brasil), FS (Força Sindical), CSB (Central dos Sindicatos Brasileiros), NCST (New Central Sindical de Trabalhadores), Contracs-CUT (Confederation of Workers in Commerce and Services), and CNTC (National Confederation of Workers in Commerce).

The union centrals say that the public action was filed to protect the more than 44,000 employees of Americanas, and to ensure that thousands of other employees with lawsuits against the retailer in the Labor Court will not be harmed by the judicial recovery or by an eventual bankruptcy.

According to the entities, there are about 17,000 labor lawsuits in progress against companies in the Americanas group, representing a total liability of R$ 1.53 billion – the amount used as a reference for the request for blocking the assets of the trio of billionaires.

The value considers what is being discussed today in court. In other words, it is not a current debt.

This Wednesday (25), Americanas delivered its list of creditors, indicating that it has R$ 41.2 billion in debt. Of this total, R$64.8 million refer to the working class.

This credit category has priority in executing payments during a judicial reorganization.

However, Fernanda Giorgi, partner at LBS Advogados, the firm responsible for the legal part of the case, says that there is a risk that the judicial recovery will not be successful.

Considering the banks’ offensive to collect Americanas’ debt and the value that the retailer claims to have cash, she says that there is an objective risk that the company will not survive and that workers will be harmed.

“We see a considerable threat that labor claims will not be honored,” he says. “We are making logical reasoning. The situation is critical, the creditors are each running behind to try to ensure the receipt of their credits, and there is a universe of workers who do not have the same power”, he adds.

The purpose of the blocking request is to ensure that the personal assets of the reference shareholders can be used to pay workers who may win their lawsuits in court. “The intention is to try to guarantee that all labor liabilities will be honored, both what exists now and what may exist in the future”, says Giorgi.

Although any new layoffs are left out of the judicial recovery process, the entities fear that workers will be harmed due to the financial conditions of the retailer.

By proposing to disregard the legal personality of Americanas, the civil action argues that the accounting scandal is a fraud that artificially inflated the company’s profit and the dividends distributed to shareholders, with the trio of billionaires being the main beneficiary.

“Thus, either by intent or, alternatively, by fault, they must be jointly and severally liable for labor damages arising from the accounting fraud narrated in this action”, says the document.

Last Sunday (22), Lemann, Sicupira and Telles released a statement in which they claimed they were unaware of the accounting flaws. They said they were victims, like the other shareholders of the company, and committed themselves to Americanas’ recovery process.