The court of Minas Gerais ordered on Thursday a leap in the daily fine that CSN () was ordered to pay for not being undone until the middle of last year of actions of rival Usiminas (), according to a court decision seen by Reuters.
The case, which is under secret justice, dates back to the 2010s, when CSN began setting up a relevant participation in Usiminas, something that the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade) rejected by determining the sale of the roles of the Minas Gerais company detained by the group of Benjamin Steinbruch.
By Thursday’s decision, the daily fine of $ 100,000 that CSN incurred for not reducing its participation in the Usiminas to a maximum of 5% until mid-year was elevated by 10 times over the next 90 days.
If at the end of this period CSN has not met the order to reduce its participation in the Usiminas, the fine will be multiplied again by 10, going to $ 10 million daily, for the next 90 days.
Thus, the value of the penalty would exceed R $ 1 billion at the end of the period, considering other amounts that CSN has been ordered to pay before. The fine will have to be deposited in court, according to the court decision.
CSN has about 13% participation in Usiminas, a company whose market value is currently about R $ 7.4 billion, according to LSEG data.
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“It is clear that the defendant (CSN) does not intend spontaneously to fulfill the obligation administratively stipulated or by the sentence, so that the daily fine set, in the amount of R $ 100,000, became insufficient,” said substitute federal judge Robson de Magalhães Pereira, from the 11th Federal Civil Court of Belo Horizonte, according to the document seen by Reuters.
Sought, Usiminas, the plaintiff that generated the order of sale of the shares by CSN, did not comment on the matter. CSN did not comment on being sought by Reuters This Thursday.
Usiminas’ preferred shares were quoted at R $ 6.01 at 4:53 pm Brasília time. Low -liquidity ordinary papers were traded at R $ 5.89.
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CSN published on January 27, 2011 that it had reached 5.03% of Usiminas common shares and 4.99% of preferred and signaled at the time that could reach more than 10% of each class. At the time, the papers were traded at R $ 17.31 and R $ 14.28, respectively.
“I understand that no causal link would be between any damage suffered by CSN and the determination contained in the sentence, as it would result from its own behavior to resist more than 10 years to fulfill, spontaneously and planned, the reduction of the shareholding to which it is obliged, more than sufficient to avoid any damage,” said the judge in Monday’s decision.
The Minas Gerais Court judgment came after the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) reduced in December from R $ 5.5 billion to R $ 3.5 billion the amount of compensation that Ternium, currently one of the controllers of Usiminas, has to pay CSN. This indemnity refers to non-realization by Ternium of a public offer to acquire the actions of the mining steelmaker detained by minority shareholders when the company entered the Usiminas Control Group in 2011.
