The Brazilian definition reaches municipal councillors across more than five thousand municipalities, and it lasts five years after the person leaves office. If your screening taxonomy was built for the European perimeter, it does not capture this.
Brazil's anti-money laundering statute is Law No. 9.613 of 3 March 1998. Under article 14, paragraph 1, of that law, the financial intelligence unit, the Coaf, issues the procedures that its supervised entities must apply. The instrument currently governing politically exposed persons is Coaf Resolution No. 40 of 22 November 2021, in force since 1 December 2021, which replaced Resolution No. 29 of 2017.
Article 1 of that Resolution lists the domestic positions that confer the status. It reaches the holders of elective office in the federal executive and legislative branches; ministers of state and equivalents; special-nature posts; the president, vice-president and directors, or equivalents, of entities of the indirect federal administration, which is to say state-owned enterprises; and senior direction and advisory posts at the sixth level or equivalent.
It then reaches the judiciary and the prosecution service in breadth: the members of the National Council of Justice, the Supreme Federal Court, the superior courts, the federal regional courts, the labour regional courts, the electoral regional courts and the associated councils; the members of the National Council of the Public Prosecution Service, the Prosecutor General of the Republic and the deputy and sectoral prosecutors general, including the prosecutors general of the states and the Federal District. It reaches the members of the Federal Court of Accounts and the prosecutors attached to it. And it reaches the national presidents and treasurers, or equivalents, of political parties.
Then it descends to the states and to the municipalities, and this is where the European reader should slow down. Governors, state and district secretaries, state and district deputies, the presidents or equivalents of entities of the indirect state administration, and the presidents of the state courts of justice, military courts and courts of accounts. And, at municipal level: mayors, municipal councillors, municipal secretaries, the presidents or equivalents of entities of the indirect municipal administration, and the presidents of municipal courts of accounts or their equivalents.
Ask about a specific fileThe enhanced treatment extends to family members, defined as relatives in the direct line up to the second degree, the spouse, the partner, and the stepson or stepdaughter. The second degree in the direct line reaches grandparents and grandchildren. A first-degree test, which several screening taxonomies apply, will not reproduce this perimeter.
The Resolution defines close associates in two ways. First, natural persons known to hold joint ownership or shareholdings with a politically exposed person, or to act as their agents, including under a private instrument, or to have any other close relationship of public knowledge with them. Second, natural persons controlling entities or arrangements known to have been created for the benefit of a politically exposed person.
The obligation is not limited to the natural person. It expressly covers operations involving legal entities in which the politically exposed person participates, which is precisely the configuration a European obliged entity encounters when a Brazilian holding structure arrives with a corporate rather than an individual counterparty.
In higher risk cases the Resolution requires, at a minimum, prior authorisation from the managing partner to establish the relationship or to continue an existing one; due diligence to establish the origin of the funds; and reinforced, continuous monitoring of the relationship. Failure to comply attracts the sanctions of article 12 of Law No. 9.613 of 1998.
For domestic positions, the Resolution directs obliged entities to official public databases, giving as an example the register of politically exposed persons maintained by the Comptroller General of the Union on the Transparency Portal, also made available through the Coaf system.
The Coaf states expressly that this register does not cover the totality of the situations, positions and functions listed in the instruments issued by the various supervisors. It is an important primary source and it must be complemented with other public and private databases. Treating it as exhaustive is the single most common Brazilian PEP error.
For positions abroad and in international bodies, the Resolution directs the obliged entity to open sources and to public and private databases, rather than to an official Brazilian register. The verification standard is therefore different in kind, and the file should say which standard was applied.
Resolution No. 40 governs entities supervised by the Coaf. Other Brazilian supervisors have issued their own instruments for their own sectors. Where a Brazilian counterparty is itself an obliged entity, the applicable text is the one issued by its supervisor, and the perimeter may differ.
A European obliged entity screens against a taxonomy built for the European definition of prominent public function. When the wealth is Brazilian, that taxonomy is being asked to answer a question governed by a different instrument with a different reach.
Three divergences matter in practice. The Brazilian instrument descends expressly to municipal councillors, mayors and municipal secretaries, a population numbering in the tens of thousands. It fixes the persistence of the status at five years after the person leaves the position, which is a long tail. And it defines family reach at the second degree in the direct line, capturing grandparents and grandchildren.
None of this means a Brazilian beneficial owner is a problem. It means that a negative result from a European-built screen is not, by itself, evidence that the Brazilian question was asked. Where the file has to withstand supervisory review, the difference between those two things is the whole file.
This page states Brazilian law as set out in Coaf Resolution No. 40 of 22 November 2021, consulted at the official portal of the Brazilian government. It is general information on foreign law and is not advice on Luxembourg or European Union law, on which your own counsel should be instructed. Verified 16 August 2026.
These answers track the text of Coaf Resolution No. 40 of 2021. Where the Resolution is silent or another supervisor governs, the answer says so.
If you are holding a specific file and need the Brazilian question answered rather than described, send it to us redacted.
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