CASES

 CASE 1

A Chinese company that produces PVC pipes for basic sanitation works, that is, destined to contain and transport domestic sewage, when realizing the Brazilian growth potential in this sector, decides to find a Brazilian company that would be its partner and helps it to insert in the Brazilian market.

Convinced that it had found this partner, the Chinese company supplies the products for the Brazilian company so they can sell it in the national market, however, over time the profits obtained were no longer sent to the exporter.

After months of payment delays and mismatches with the information provided by the Brazilian partner, the Chinese exporter contacts us and requests assistance to understand the problems encountered by the importer to send the due payments derived from the marketing of the mentioned products.

After we contact the Brazilian importer and hold a meeting at our office, we realized that the payments that have been made to our exporter were from a bidding to which the importer has participated and has been selected as a company responsible for carrying out the maintenance and expansion of the basic sanitation services in São Paulo State. However, the importer was finding it very difficult to find new buyers for these goods sent by the importer and had not even initiated the nationalization process regarding the rest of the goods shipped to avoid paying the costs involved in this process.

Also after analyzing the import documentation for these goods, we noticed that the B/Ls and Invoices were all not in the name of the importer, but in the name of a trading company that imported the goods as the importer requested and paid for the costs. Thus, we had two options, to assist the exporter and find new buyers for the goods or wait for the importer to do so.

We presented these options to the exporter who chooses for the first option, since all the documentation was in the name of the trading company and according to the current Brazilian legislation, only the companies mentioned in the import documentation could start the import process of the goods sent to Brazilian ports. In this case, to sell the goods we would only need to contact the trading company, explain the situation and start the process of selling the goods with their assistance.

With the help of the trading company and with the complete list of all goods sent to Brazil, we realized thatBrazilian “partners” had also nationalized goods that had not been contemplated in the bidding and then shouldbe paid as well, that is, the importer nationalized goods and did not pay them properly. For this reason, in addition to not having been able to sell the goods shipped, as the exporter was convinced they would be able to do, but importer also did not pay for all nationalized goods.

With that, we worked on two fronts, the first one with the help of the trading company, we resell the goods that were in the port and were in danger of going to forfeit and on the second front, we collected the payment of the nationalized goods by the importers. Therefore, we were able to recover all the credit that was due to the Chinese supplier as well as we were able to avoid any loss of the goods after reselling the rest of the goods that were still in the Brazilian port, that is, the interference of our employees was essential to avoid a big loss for the Chinese company.

 CASE 2

After an order received to send goods to Brazil, a Chinese company that produces shielding glasses sends this order as requested by the person who made the initial contact. However, after days without receiving any payment and without being able to make any contact with the alleged buyer, this Chinese exporter contacts us and explains the situation they were in.

In our first steps, we tried to get in touch with the person who introduced himself to the supplier as being the buyer, who would be later responsible for selling and making payments to the exporter, however, as well as with the supplier, we were also unable to contact the "buyer".

With that, we analyzed the import documentation and got in touch with the company that was mentioned in these documentation, after discussing the case with the director of that company, they simply did not recognize the order for this merchandise and not even the name of the person who would have contacted the Chinese exporter. To solve this complicated situation, we try to locate the goods so from that point we can try to draw a course of action.

In fact, the goods were still in the port, so we could still take care of nationalizing the goods, moreover, after doing a detailed research we noticed that the company mentioned in the documentation acted in a completely different branch from the goods that had been imported and the person who made the first contact was unreachable. Thus, we concluded that in this case it was an attempted fraud, that is, the fraudster (in this case, the person responsible for the first contact with the exporter) used the information of a large Brazilian company to deceive exporters and place orders for goods originating from other countries and then tried to nationalize these goods with false documentation to sell them and not make payment to the supplier.

To solve this problem, we explained to the Brazilian company and to our Chinese client what had really happened in this case, since the Brazilian company was at risk of suffering possible problems with the Federal Revenue, since, in the case of the merchandise that was in its name were confiscated, they would certainly have problems importing new goods in addition to being victims of this fraudster, and our client was at risk of losing all the goods sent to Brazil and thus having to bear all the costs involved in production alone.

We, therefore, recommend that the Brazilian company help us to find a new buyer for this merchandise to bear the importation costs and commercialization. In this way, the Brazilian company would receive payments from this new buyer and then remit those payments to our customer, since according to Brazilian law only the company mentioned in the import documentation could send remittances to the exporter, as this is how the Brazilian Federal Revenue controls the dispatch of foreign currency abroad.

And in a matter of weeks, this entire process described above was completed, thus preventing our client from suffering a big loss, as well as preventing the Brazilian company from receiving future penalties due to fraud by a third party.

In short, it was the deep knowledge of our staff about not only the functioning of Brazilian legislation that dictates foreign trade, which helped in the decision-making process, but also our ability to locate companies and goods that allowed us to avoid any kind of loss for our client, concluding this case with complete success.

To make an addendum, a few months later, it was widely reported in the traditional Brazilian media that the person who carried out this fraud was arrested accused of committing this same crime with several other Brazilian and foreign companies, thus proving that our employees were correct assuming that this case was an attempt of fraud by a third party and confirming that the course of action previously taken was correct.