Guidelines for Cade's Antritrust Leniency Program

Access the 2025 edition of CADE's Antitrust Leniency Programme Guidelines.

Learn more about the Guidelines:

On 25 May 2016, the Tribunal of CADE ratified, after a Public Consultation, the Antitrust Leniency Programme Guidelines, a document consolidating the best practices and procedures adopted by the Office of the Superintendent General at CADE (SG) to negotiate and sign leniency agreements. On 23 June 2016, the authority published the English version of the document.

The Guidelines, designed in a Q&A format, aims to provide more transparency in the agreements, while building an institutional record of cases, and providing references for future negotiations.

In September 2017, the document was updated to include a new section for leniency agreements in international cartel cases, in addition to a better breakdown of the process to obtain benefits of the leniency plus.

After the upgrade of the Statutes of CADE (Approved by Resolution no. 22 of 19 June 2019 and updated by Amendment no. 01/2020 of 02 April 2020), and the implementation of the Clique Leniência platform, the Guidelines were revised in December 2021, altering the Articles related to the Leniency Programme and introducing an online, new, simple, and secure way to request a marker.

In September 2021, CADE launched the Parameters for Submitting Evidence in Leniency Applications, aiming to direct the government regarding the evidentiary standards to be observed in antitrust leniency agreement negotiations, assisting in the evidentiary assessment of reported violations.

Based on evidence of cartel cases judged by the Tribunal over the past 27 years, excerpts from these decisions are available in the document.

Moreover, the Guidelines provide important directives for applicants to conduct internal investigations and offer guidance on how to structure more effective compliance programs.

Four years later, in 2025, the new updated document included important improvements, bringing more efficiency to the negotiations, broadening the effectiveness of the program, as well as strengthening the cooperation among public bodies.

The new document is the result of a participatory process, based on input received during the Working Group’s activities, which included contributions by government officials, lawyers, and academics, and from the Public Consultation conducted by CADE.

These steps were essential to ensure that the Guidelines reflect the best practices, consider different perspectives, and bring greater transparency and legal certainty to Brazilian leniency programmes.