Brf Leniency Agreement

In addition to its leniency program, the Brazilian authority has a transaction procedure where that companies and individuals who have not been the first to report anti-competitive behaviour can negotiate a transaction under an omission agreement. The news agency added, citing a person familiar with the case, who asked not to be mentioned, that investigators are still negotiating a formal clemency agreement with the BRF in exchange for their continued cooperation. Brazil`s Anti-Corruption Act No. 12.846 of August 1, 2013, known abroad as the Clean Company Act, provided an important tool to help authorities investigate and investigate evidence, a so-called leniency agreement. The following table shows the risks and benefits of negotiating different types of agreements with the authorities. BCL recalls that cartel and abuse of dominance practices include any type of agreement, manipulation or adaptation between competitors, including agreements to price goods or services; fix, restrict or restrict the production or marketing of products or services; award potential or actual contracts or offer public offers. 1 The leniency communication has not become a novelty in Brazilian law since the advent of Brazil`s anti-corruption law, since it was already with us with the adoption of Law No. 12.529 of November 30, 2011 on cartels. Due to cartel rules and abuse of dominance, the clemency communication was almost discredited, in the famous case of a cartel that was extended from 1999 to 2013 to the states Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and the Federal District by several companies, including Siemens, Alstom, Bombardier, CAF, ESA, MGE, Mistui, MPE, TC / BR, Tejofran, Temoinsa and TTrans. Siemens has entered into a leniency agreement with the Board of Economic Defense – CADE, the Attorney General and the Attorney General of the State of Sao Paulo, with the aim of uncovering the entire system put in place by the aforementioned companies in exchange for the reduction of the penalty. In addition, it is essential that the authorities do not have sufficient evidence as to the conduct reported pending the application of clemency. This is directly related to the „Winner-takes all“ approach: applicants must report behaviour that CADE does not have prior knowledge of.

Although there is no explicit concept of „prior knowledge,“ it is generally considered that there is prior knowledge where there is an ongoing administrative procedure with well-founded evidence of anti-competitive behaviour or where CADE already has information of sufficient probative value to support the initiation of an administrative procedure. If the authorities are aware of the conduct at the time of the application, but do not have sufficient evidence to justify a conviction, the applicant receives a reduction of one-third to two-thirds. The first collaboration between competitors, verified by CADE in the Covid 19 scenario, was cooperation between Ambev, BRF, Coca-Cola, Mondelez, Nestlé and Pepsico, which was presented to the Authority as a necessary measure to minimize the impact of the Covid 19 crisis on the activities of small retailers. 13 In the absence of indicative resources, CADE based its decision on the fact that the cooperation was not fundamentally anti-competitive and that the parties had taken every precaution taken to prevent possible risks to cartels and abuse of dominance. However, when approving the cooperation, CADE stressed that the agreement was an exceptional measure and stressed that such an exceptional measure did not constitute antitrust immunity. In April 2020, four companies and three individuals were fined 20.9 million reais for participating in a long-standing global agreement in the brazilian submarine and submarine cable market, including market allocation, customer allocation and non-competition agreements.