At the opening of the webinar “Compliance Measures in Times of Crisis”, conducted by ABES in partnership with the Mattos Filho Advogados office on April 24, Carolina Marzano, the entity's compliance officer, explained that the association brings together about two thousand companies from the IT sector and which, in 2017, was one of the first associations in Brazil to implement its compliance program internally. She also explained that, in a second moment, this program was extended to associates through the initiative An Ethical Company, which aims to raise awareness in the market about the best practices of ethical conduct and to encourage associates to implement an integrity program in their organizations. .
Risk management
Thiago Jabor Pinheiro, partner at the Mattos Filho office in Compliance and Corporate Ethics, commented that Covid-19 required measures from the public authorities, companies and citizens. “The pandemic has an immediate impact on companies, starting with concern for the health of employees and their families, which requires companies to adapt measures to reduce the risks of contagion. Each sector has responded differently to these challenges, adjusting its business model, its production line, delivery method and so on. At the same time, the public authorities intensify their inspection actions ”, he warned.
The lawyer advised companies to seek to identify the new risks specific to their sector brought about by the pandemic and to reinforce compliance procedures with their team. “Even if the government has extended, in some areas, the deadlines for administrative and judicial proceedings to be resolved, laws, such as the penal code, the administrative impropriety law and the anti-corruption law, remain in force. The authorities are investigating suspected irregularities in the relationship between companies and public authorities. We have to remember that 2020 is an election year, with special rules related to the performance of the public power ”, he stressed. In the company, it is important that there is a crisis committee, a group of people who are concerned with designing, implementing and monitoring control measures and monitoring legislative changes, in view of the organization's risk matrix in the areas of corruption, logistics , contract, regulatory, labor, financial, tax and business continuity.
Bidding waiver
Thiago Luís Sombra, a partner at the Mattos Filho firm in Compliance and Corporate Ethics, Technology and Infrastructure practices, addressed some points of attention generated by the pandemic, which are of interest to technology companies, starting with the possibility of waiving bidding. He cited as an example the Ministry of Health that is contracting several artificial intelligence solutions for the development of mass tests in the Brazilian population, through exemption from bidding.
The lawyer clarified that Law 13979/2020 provides for the possibility that the dismissal will occur in very specific emergency situations, such as the risk to the safety of the population and to the health care of the population. With the emergency situation, preliminary studies end up being unnecessary. The bidding waiver, however, is restricted to the period during which the state of emergency or calamity lasts. Thus, when these decrees are revoked, the possibility of hiring by layoff will also be suspended. Another relevant observation is that hiring by waiver of bidding is limited to a period of six months, renewable for another six months. “A great novelty that we have identified is that Provisional Measure 951 made it possible to make emergency purchases or by bidding waiver, within the context of Covid-19, through the price registration system (SRP), as part of an effort to unification and uniformity of prices for hiring technological solutions or other products and services ”, explained Thiago Sombra.
Another point of attention addressed was the instrument for administrative requisition of equipment and technological solutions, which is liable to indemnification by the government later, and the entire process must be well documented, with data from the requesting authority, issuance of invoices, details of what was requested and delivery term.
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