Covid-19: Provisional Measure suspends deadlines in administrative procedures and statute of limitations for sanctions of the Anticorruption Law
On March 23, 2020, the Provisional Measure (PM). No. 928, was enacted in the Official Gazette. The PM amends the Federal Law No. 13979 published on February 6, 2020, which provides for measures to deal with the public health emergency resulting from the calamity caused by the coronavirus. (Covid-19)
According to MP 928, as long as the pandemic continues and the public health emergency is faced:
(i) the deadlines for replying to requests regard access to information are suspended in public administration bodies or entities whose servers are subject to quarantine, teleworking or equivalent system;
(ii) procedural deadlines will be suspended against the accused and entities private individuals subject to administrative proceedings for as long as the state of calamity referred to in Decree No. 6/2020 remains;
(iii) the statute of limitations for the application of administrative sanctions provided for the Anticorruption Law (Law no. 12.846/ 2013), Public Officials of the Union Law (Law no. 81212/1990), and The Law which provides the statute of limitation of punitive action applied by the Federal Public Administration (Law no. 9.873/1999) are also suspended and in the other applicable rules related to public officials.
On March 26, the Supreme Federal Court postponed the precautionary measure to suspend MP 928, which imposes restrictions on the Access to Information Law (LAI) amid the covid-19 pandemic. The issue is still unstable, therefore, as legal entities, individuals and parties in the administrative proceedings or who have made requirements based on LAI, must be attentive to the daily publications of the different powers regarding changes in regulations and potential impacts on deadlines and resuming their progress.
Trench Rossi e Watanabe is available to carry out daily legislative monitoring, nationwide, seeking to safeguard the interests of our customers and mitigate the risks of impacts on their businesses.
