Juliana Domingues appointed CADE attorney general; Victor Fernandes named CADE councilor

Former Brazilian Consumer Protection Secretary Juliana Domingues has been appointed the national competition authority's attorney general, and Supreme Court Chief of Staff Victor Fernandes has been appointed a councilor of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense, or CADE.

Their nominations, made by Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, were published today in the country's official journal, and must be approved by the Senate Economic Affairs Committee and then be voted on by the full Senate. After Senate confirmation, their names must be published in the country's Official Journal — a process that should take no more than a few days — before the confirmation is official and they can take office.

The Senate is expected to vote on their nominations this month, together with two other nominations for CADE, it is understood: Alexandre Barreto as CADE's new superintendent, and Gustavo Augusto Freitas de Lima as CADE councilor.

CADE has been operating with an acting attorney general, Rodrigo Belon, since October 2021. The attorney general is the chief of CADE's legal team, known as ProCADE, which is responsible for representing the agency in court cases, monitoring compliance with settlement agreements in both merger and cartel cases and issuing opinions on conduct investigations before the Tribunal decides on them.

The agency's Tribunal has two vacant councilor positions, one last occupied by Mauricio Oscar Bandeira Maia, who left the agency in July 2021 at the end of his term, and the other by Paula Farani Azevedo Silveira, who left the agency in February 2022 at the end of her term.

Fernandes was nominated to take Azevedo's position, while Lima was nominated to take Maia's position. Lima's process at the Senate is more advanced than the other candidates, as his nomination was approved by CADE in December 2021.

Councilors from CADE`s Tribunal are responsible for analyzing complex merger cases that need remedies or that will be blocked, and cartel and unilateral conduct cases. After analyzing a case, the councilor leading the investigation must take the case to a ruling session for voting. Councilors from the Tribunal also are responsible for building a body of case law on different subjects.

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Domingues has background in antitrust and consumer protection matters. She was director of the department of consumer protection and defense of the National Consumer Secretariat (Senacon) from January 2020 to April 2020, when she left her post to assume the position of acting secretary of Senacon. In August 2020, however, she became a permanent secretary, a position she occupied until March 2022. She is currently a special advisor to Minister of Justice Anderson Torres.

Domingues teaches economic law, antitrust and trade remedies at University of São Paulo and is a regional leader of the Academic Society for Competition Law in Brazil. Domingues is well known in the antitrust field.

Fernandes is chief of staff to Justice Gilmar Mendes, of the Federal Supreme Court, and he teaches economic law at the Brazilian Institute of Education, Development and Research. He worked as chief of staff of a CADE Tribunal councilor from June 2017 to May 2019, and was a legal counsel on regulatory matters of Brazil's Presidency from May 2016 to July 2017.