The 6th Federal Criminal Court of Rio de Janeiro has accepted charges filed by federal prosecutors (MPF) and formally indicted 12 former executives of Lojas Americanas, one of Brazil's largest retail chains, over the accounting fraud that drove the company into court-supervised debt restructuring under billions of reais in debt. The decision was reported on Friday (16) by Folha de S.Paulo, in a Reuters dispatch. The charges were filed in 2025 and the case is under seal.
According to the indictment, detailed by Metrópoles in June 2026, the scheme used accounting maneuvers to artificially inflate the company's profits and manipulate the share prices of Lojas Americanas and its online arm B2W on the stock exchange. The hole in the books is estimated at R$ 24 billion (about US$ 4.8 billion). Prosecutors presented emails, messages exchanged between the accused and documents showing the gap between the real and the doctored accounting.
The scheme, according to prosecutors
The indictment says Miguel Gutierrez, the former CEO, planned and executed the fraud, using his position at the top of the hierarchy to coordinate the others. A Federal Police investigation found the scheme ran at least from February 2016 to December 2022, when Gutierrez left the company. The fraud surfaced on January 11, 2023, shortly after a management change, when Americanas told the market it had found "inconsistencies in accounting entries".
In June 2026, the Federal Police, backed by the MPF, launched the second phase of Operation Disclosure, serving nine search and seizure warrants in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, according to Metrópoles. Courts also authorized the seizure of assets from those under investigation, in measures that could reach R$ 54 billion.
Asked by Folha, Americanas said it had no access to the ruling and stated it trusts the courts and authorities to hold those responsible for the fraud accountable. "The company reiterates that it was the victim of a structured and intentional fraud committed by the former executives," the company said in a statement.
With the charges accepted, the 12 are now defendants and will be summoned to present their defense. The criminal case runs in parallel to the debt restructuring, which the company has recently asked to exit, according to Metrópoles. For creditors and suppliers still waiting to be paid, the criminal action does not change the repayment plan in the short term, but keeps alive the prospect of future compensation from those blamed by prosecutors. For shoppers, nothing changes at the checkout: stores keep operating while the courts decide who will answer for the losses.