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SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A consumer protection organization on Monday filed a precautionary measure in which it accuses the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) of negligence in the Americanas case and asks for the blocking of assets of the auditing firm PwC.
The measure opened by the Brazilian Association for the Defense of Consumers and Workers (Abradecont) was sent to the Federal Court in Rio de Janeiro, asking for liability for damage caused, being preparatory to a public civil action to be filed later.
The entity claims that PwC “acted without any limit or effective supervision by the CVM”, and that “all reports presented by the audit firm were considered sufficient and did not suffer resistance from the supervisory body”.
For Abradecont, although the CVM has opened procedures to investigate the case of Americanas, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this month after discovering an accounting hole of 20 billion reais, the performance of the autarchy “must be duly investigated”.
The action, filed through the law firm, Antunes, the association asks the judge to determine the immediate blocking of PwC’s assets and also prohibit it from issuing reports “that have the securities market as their purpose”.
In a note, the CVM stated that it is not within its sphere of competence “to approve and/or reject audit reports of any publicly-held company”, but that it is a regulator of conduct.
Queried, PwC did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
(Reporting by Carolina Pulice, writing by Aluísio Alves)
