By majority, the board of directors of the Securities and Exchange Commission sentenced former Banco de Brasília (BRB) board member Romes Ribeiro to a warning for failure to exercise due diligence when filling out the bank’s forms, during the biennia 2020-2022 and 2022-2024. At the same trial, he was unanimously acquitted of the conflict of interest charge.
The sanction procedure was opened in 2024 and indicated that Ribeiro had accumulated the position of advisor, while maintaining a relationship as a lawyer for the insurance company Wiz, a partner company of BRB, allegedly omitting this information. Ribeiro is a career employee of the BRB and was elected advisor by the minority shareholders for five consecutive terms (2013, 2015, 2018, 2020 and 2022).
The process resumed this Thursday (18), after a request for review made by director Otto Lobo, current interim president, on June 17. Today, Lobo fully followed the rapporteur’s vote. He agrees that the existence of a competing company has not been characterized and that, therefore, the dual professional function does not constitute a conflict of interest.
However, in accordance with the rapporteur, he understood that a violation of the duty of care is characterized by non-compliance with formal information obligations. For Lobo, it is not a question of a subjective evaluation of decisions, but of inconsistencies in the declarations required by governance. “This is a duty of an instrumental and preventive nature.”
The matter was reported by the former president of the municipality, João Pedro Nascimento, who, putting the case on the agenda in June, voted for the conviction of Ribeiro for failure to exercise due diligence and for his acquittal for conflict of interest.
On this occasion, director Marina Copola followed the vote in its entirety, while director João Accioly voted to acquit the accused of all charges, as he understood that the duty of care does not apply to the filling of forms and the precedents cited by the local authority.
During the June trial, the defense argued that Romes Ribeiro did not omit information from BRB and that he always informed about his professional situation, refraining from decisions involving Wiz. He also argued that there was no conflict of interest when he simultaneously held a position on the bank’s board of directors and acted as Wiz’s attorney.
When contacted, Romes Ribeiro’s defense and BRB did not respond until this publication. The space remains open.
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