When he founded EvidJuri, an independent litigation expert firm, in 2017, lawyer and auditor Stefano Cruvenel intended to work with Brazilian companies to prevent losses caused by purchasing inappropriate software sold by tech giants. According to Cruvenel, who has worked at some major technology companies, in their desire to grow at scale, many of them push projects that are not suitable for certain companies, causing losses to these companies.
Given a cultural problem in Brazil of treatment rather than prevention, Cruvenel says that along the way, he ended up frequently being asked to act in legal proceedings where the ruling had already been rendered and was inappropriate for his clients. With specialized experience, the jurist seeks to reverse these decisions in actions against corporate giants such as Siemens, Oracle, Totvs, SAP and Sankhya.
Has the number of lawsuits filed against tech giants increased?
Yes, there is a huge increase. When country risks rise, legal risks also rise.
Like him?
When there is this scenario of insecurity that we are seeing now, because input prices have gone up and tax costs have gone up, the rebound effect is a flattening of the profit margin. Therefore, to reach the target indicators and get the same financial result, big technology companies start selling more projects and end up exposing the customer and themselves to more risks. Aggression goes up and quality goes down. As a result, legal action is also increasing.
Mr. This means that these companies are intentionally selling bad products to their customers. Clients?
Products can be very good, but only for certain sectors. For others, they are terrible. Or it is a project that does not work within the proposed budget. I have seen projects worth millions of riyals, and if you allocate two or three times the budget, the company still won’t deliver it, because the segment is not aligned with the product they sold.
Do contractors end up paying more than expected?
Big tech companies are taking debt from their customers at no interest. Because they sell a project, take the money, and if the project fails, they send more invoices. How much interest did they pay on this loan? no one.
They know that the project costs R$1 million, but they sell it for R$300,000. Unlike Project, where you can change contractors, Software requires a relationship with the supplier, because the company has contracted the license. That’s why Big Tech has become a third world power. Because it dominates data and information. But 1 in 10 clients file a lawsuit and most lose those lawsuits.
Why do you lose the majority?
Because there is no evidence. Although the customer is right, the possibility of losing is high, because big technology has the advantage in every aspect. The contract is convenient because big tech companies do it. They have previous experience in legal procedures. They know the technical jargon, and they are experts in the subject. And the client has none of that. Moreover, they pump cash flow at the customer’s expense, because these processes take time. So they choke the customer until he surrenders.
How is EvidJuri involved in these processes?
We act in very unique situations. There was a sentence that broke the client. Millions in losses and losses that he will have to pay who knows how, and maybe even go bankrupt. By the time we were able to overturn the judgment with the opinion that technical evidence was indispensable, because the judiciary rules without expertise, my client had gone from being a debtor of R$18 million to a creditor of R$12 million to Oracle. And then, in a very interesting way, I suffer a lot of revenge.
What kind of revenge?
Operations. Siemens sued me and I sued them. They complained about the amount of R $ 50 million in the title of an article in Bound (The value of the loss that the expert found in one of the companies due to the use of Siemens programs). They say I leaked classified information from a public operation. They wanted to suppress me.
X-rays
Stefano Crovenel, 38
Sacramento (MG), 1987
Legal expert and senior auditor in forensic sciences, specialist in contracts and mergers and acquisitions at FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas) He is an expert in data analysis applied to artificial intelligence. He serves as Counselor and Reviewer at the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ), in addition to chairing EvidJuri.
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