Brazil’s CGU and AGU launch public consultation on leniency agreements

On July 29, 2025, Brazil’s Federal Comptroller General (CGU) and Federal Attorney General’s Office (AGU) published the draft of a joint ordinance proposing improvements to criteria and procedures provided for in the Brazilian Anti-Corruption Law (Federal Law No. 12,846/2013) that govern the negotiation, execution, and oversight of leniency agreements. The new ordinance is set to replace CGU/AGU Joint Ordinance No. 4/2019.

The public consultation will remain open for input until August 12, 2025, which can be submitted via the Participa + Brasil platform. It seeks to encourage public participation by allowing suggested inclusions, exclusions, amendments, or improvements to sections of the proposed text.

Key provisions proposed for amendment

The CGU/AGU’s draft ordinance seeks to strengthen legal certainty, increase transparency, and make the leniency agreement mechanism more effective. The main proposed changes include:

• In assessing the degree of the company’s cooperation, consideration would be given to whether the company conducted an internal investigation, provided relevant information, and submitted supporting documentation of the wrongful acts.
• Regulating the procedure for a marker that would allow the company to formally express its desire to cooperate even before it concludes its internal investigations, thereby attesting to the timeliness of the self-reporting.
• The execution of the leniency agreement would be conditional on the legal entity expressly agreeing to “forfeit, in favor of the harmed entity or the federal government (as applicable), the amount corresponding to the undue increase in assets or the illicit enrichment directly or indirectly derived from the infraction, pursuant to the terms and amount defined in the negotiation.”
• Reducing fines by up to two-thirds for companies that self-report for the first time in a timely manner and at their own initiative, based on more objective criteria.
• Defining technical, transparent criteria for the method used to calculate the advantage obtained from the wrongdoing, with the aim of enabling proportional discounts based on the cooperating company’s economic conditions.
• Specifying measures to prevent double jeopardy (bis in idem) by including rules on crediting amounts already paid in other domestic or foreign proceedings.
• A provision to review agreements on an exceptional basis in order to uphold the public interest and original outcomes, in cases of unforeseeable events and when the cooperating company has acted in good faith.
• Establishing rules for interrupting and suspending the statute of limitations for up to 360 days upon executing a memorandum of understanding and negotiations.
• Establishing a deadline to fully pay the negotiated amounts, along with the criteria for assessing any proposed payment instalment plan, within 90 days of the execution of the leniency agreement.

Any amendments resulting from this public consultation may be applied immediately to ongoing negotiations and new agreements.

For more information on this topic, please contact Mattos Filho’s Compliance & Corporate Ethics and Administrative Law practice areas.