Our partner Roberto Panucci was featured in a Broadcast | Agência Estado article on the possible regulatory effects of BRB's delay in publishing its financial statements.
From a technical standpoint, it is important to separate the delay itself from whatever may arise from underlying facts identified by supervision.
The late publication of financial statements, considered in isolation, has in the past given rise to the following types of penalties:
- a coercive/daily fine for missing the deadline, imposed by the Central Bank;
- an administrative sanctioning proceeding, with penalties such as a warning or a monetary fine;
- in the case of a listed company, repercussions before the CVM as well.
In similar cases, only a monetary sanction was applied, and the delay was not grounds for a RAET (Temporary Special Administration Regime), intervention or liquidation of the financial institutions that breached the rules. Accordingly, the Central Bank is not expected to impose a more severe sanction on BRB because of the delay.
Any more severe measures would depend not on the delay itself, but on what supervision may find regarding other aspects under review, such as financial capacity, adequacy of provisioning and the nature of transactions carried out in recent years.
In the article, our partner Roberto Panucci stressed: "São essas questões de fundo e não o atraso em si que podem, a depender do que a supervisão apurar, justificar eventuais sanções mais severas." [It is these underlying issues, and not the delay itself, that may, depending on what supervision finds, justify more severe sanctions.] Nevertheless, without access to the evidence gathered by the authorities, it is not possible to give an opinion on what such sanctions might be.
If there is any harsher consequence in a specific case, it should not be read as a new standard for late financial statements. A correct regulatory assessment depends on separating the delay itself from any underlying circumstances identified, and it is precisely this distinction that makes it possible to size the risk and define the appropriate legal strategy.
