Last big corporate scandals in Brazil: Why investors did not see it in the annual reports?

Abstract

This paper measures the level of disclosure of information in the fight against corruption in sustainable reports disclosed by companies that participated in the last major corruption scandals in Brazil, between the years 2013 and 2016. The data were collected from the sustainability reports of the organizations (Petrobras S.A., Odebrecht Organization, Brasil Foods S.A. and JBS S.A.). To measure the disclosure level was used the content analysis through the Novethic/SCPC survey (2006), as used in other papers (Branco, 2010; Machado, 2013; Branco & Matos, 2016). Among the results, the main was that the fact that companies were exposed to large corruption scandals did not modify their level of disclosure of information in the fight against corruption, contrary to what was expected, companies had high levels of this kind of disclosure before the scandals and continued to have after. The results also showed that the information about internal organization to combat corruption, such as ethics committees, reporting system, departments to deal with this issue and about the implementation of procedures related to suppliers and other business partners, such as actions that encourage the implementation of anti-corruption training and systems was the most disclosure. While information about partnerships with nongovernmental entities or other organizations that have an interest in combating to this type of behavior was the least reported. The results demonstrated that is necessary look carefully to what is really happening and what it is disclosed in the companies' reports. Moreover, where are the failures so that what has been disclosed will not actually happen?