Conclusion
| Autor | Michael Freitas Mohallem, Beto Vasconcelos and Guilherme France |
| Ocupação do Autor | Professor at FGV Rio Law School/Professor at FGV Rio Law School/Researcher at FGV Rio Law School |
| Páginas | 41-41 |
Integrity and Transparency in Brazil’s State-Owned Enterprises 41
CONCLUSION
113 Released by Transparency International in 2017 the “10 Anti-Corruption Principles for State-Owned Enterprises” provides guidance to SOEs of all types
and sizes on integrity, transparency and anti-corruption best practices. Available at:
file/2017_SOE_Principles_Report_EN.pdf>. Accessed on: March 21, 2020.
There is no denying the advances that Brazilian
SOEs have gone through with regards to governance.
Parts of them are due to the evolutionary process
that Brazilian law has undergone, which naturally
affected these companies. This process refers to
the Anti-Corruption Act, the Access to Information
Act and the Conflicts of Interest Act, among
others. In addition to these laws, the institutional
improvement of control mechanisms, embodied,
for example, in the evolution of the Office of the
Comptroller General, also played an important role.
It is also important to highlight the particular
advances in the situation of SOEs, among which
the State-Owned Enterprises Act is undoubtedly
the most relevant. Provided for in the Federal
Constitution, Brazil’s Legislative branch took almost
30 years to fulfil the basic imperative necessary to
standardise the treatment of the country’s SOEs.
The rules related to integrity, transparency and
governance programs were important steps in the
fight against corruption in said companies.
Despite these advances, challenges remain.
This paper sought to address both challenges
and advances, based on a review of the literature
produced on the topic and, more importantly, on the
experience shared by employees of SOEs working in
the areas of governance, compliance and risk within
the Integrity Initiative’s Advisory Board for SOEs.
There is disagreement about the roles of
SOEs in the economy. Furthermore, difficulties in
reconciling their functions are frequent – economic
efficiency/profitability and the achievement of
public policies. Divergences and difficulties have
placed the debate on SOEs and the Brazilian State’s
model permanently at the centre of the national
political debate.
The prominent position that SOEs continue
to occupy in the Brazilian scenario means that
they will play an important role in forming political
coalitions that allow the consolidation of the
support bases of any chairperson presiding
over Congress. The restrictions on board
member appointments imposed by the State-
Owned Enterprises Act seek to address this
issue. However, a broader discussion on the
governance structure and the exercise of State
power in SOEs remains elusive. Thus, the World
Bank’s suggestion to adopt the centralised model
remains difficult.
In addition to these, technical difficulties still
remain for the implementation of the standards
already created. The diversity of Brazilian SOEs
– small, medium and large; municipal, state and
federal; public enterprises and mixed-capital
companies – makes the establishment of rules
applicable to all of them and their enforcement
a challenge for monitoring entities and for civil
society. The current period of economic crisis
and difficulties in national public accounts also
aggravates this scenario.
This work is expected to be a starting and
reference point for new initiatives and research
that seek to understand how SOEs are effectively
responding to domestic and international
regulatory advances, as well as the responses
they offer to the urgent need for improving their
corruption-fighting mechanisms. In this regard,
Transparency International’s publication of the
“10 Anti-Corruption Principles for State-Owned
Enterprises” represents a welcome opportunity
to trigger these efforts. 113
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