A trial scheduled for August in (Supreme Federal Court) must define whether discounts granted to the scope of other companies under investigation.
One of the companies pointed out as possible beneficiaries is the Wesley and. The company closed with the Federal an agreement that.
Only companies that signed leniency with the (Attorney General of the Union) and the (Comptroller General of the Union), federal government agencies, got access to a discount on payment. This is not the case with J&F, but the STF trial may favor the company.
Originally, the process scheduled for August could validate the renegotiation of Lava Jato leniency agreements proposed last year by UTC, Braskem, OAS, Camargo Corrêa, Andrade Gutierrez contractors, new participations and Odebrecht.
According to technical data from the Federal Court of Audit (TCU), this renegotiation gave a discount of R $ 5.7 million to what companies would originally pay.
The trial, however, should also deal with other issues that were launched in the file, such as expanding the validity of terms to companies that signed leniency agreements with the prosecutor alone.
The rapporteur of the case, minister, guided the trial to start on August 8 at the Virtual Plenary (platform in which ministers deposit their votes without debate). The session ends on the 18th.
The idea of Mendonça is to solve the possible validation of the renegotiations made between the AGU, the CGU and the companies, and also to analyze the merit (definitive judgment) of the action. After this definition, there is the possibility that the decision reaches other cases.
A leniency agreement is a kind of award -winning denunciation of a company, in which it points to irregularities that have been committed and agrees to pay a fine in exchange for benefits in court.
The action dealing with Supreme Lencies is an ADPF (action for non -compliance with a fundamental precept, a process that aims to protect the Constitution) presented in 2023 by PSOL, PC do B and Solidarity parties.
In it, the parties asked for the suspension of payment of fines “in all leniency agreements celebrated between the State and companies investigated during Operation Lava Jato” until August 2020.
At the time, a technical cooperation between sectors of the government and the prosecutor was signed, defining guidelines for these negotiations.
Also according to the parties, the punishments applied to the leniency agreements were harmful to companies. The action asked them to be reviewed and that there was an interpretation of the Supreme that would remove “once and for all, the punitivist and unconstitutional hermeneutics of laundry in the agreements.
Mendonça created a conciliation table in early 2024. Only part of the companies that had signed agreement with AGU and CGU ended up closing the terms of renegotiation.
Companies such as J&F, which made an agreement with the Federal Prosecutor only, were left out of this renegotiation.
Among other benefits, renegotiation replaces SELIC with the IPCA (National Consumer Price Index) as an index of business debtors. It also changes the payment schedule and allows the use of tax loss credits to pay up to 50% of the outstanding balance.
With the forecast of judgment of the action in August, the parties made a petition to the Supreme Court stating that “the criteria and parameters set by the TCU, CGU and AGU should be applied to all companies that signed leniency agreements within the Union (AGU/CGU) and prosecutors and which qualified in the context of this ADPF”.
They also ask that the same parameters are valid for leniency agreements made in the future.
It was not just the parties that made this request. Paraná companies that failed to participate in the renegotiation have asked “to be applied to the leniency agreements celebrated by the other companies qualified in these records, including those signed only before the Federal and State Public Prosecutors.”
It is this possibility that will be analyzed and can benefit other companies.
According to Rafael Valim of Warde Advogados, which represents the parties, ADPF is a broad action that should produce effects on all those affected by the format of leniency agreements during the Lava Jato period. That is, it should not be restricted to companies that renegotiated with the Union.
He says he does not know that other companies would benefit if his request is met.
The CGU stated that the renegotiation of agreements in the action “was restricted to companies that already had leniency agreements celebrated with CGU and AGU”. “We inform you that CGU and AGU have not entered into a leniency agreement with the company J&F Investimentos,” he says.
The Attorney General of the Republic, in a statement in the file, said that the conciliation will already be answered if the Supreme Court validates only the cases of contractors who signed an agreement with the Union. Sought, J&F did not speak.
