The Compliance Reality in Latin America: What Every Cross-Border Business Needs to Know

If you're doing business in Latin America, or planning to, compliance is not a back-office concern. It is a front-line risk. And it looks very different in São Paulo than it does in Bogotá or Santiago.

On 28 May, AGA hosted the first of its 'Operating in LatAm: The Compliance Reality' series, bringing together three senior practitioners from AGA offices in Brazil, Colombia, and Chile. Facilitated by Silvia Almeida, Senior In-House Counsel at Casa dos Ventos, the conversation was candid, technically grounded, and full of practical insight for any business operating across the region.

One Region. Very Different Rules.
The panel's opening message was also its most important: Latin America is not a single compliance environment. Each country has its own legal architecture, enforcement culture, and risk profile. Deploying a headquarters-designed compliance programme across the region, translated but otherwise unchanged, is one of the most common and costly mistakes multinationals make.

Filipe Batich, Madrona Advogados, Brazil comments:

"You cannot treat Latin America as if it is a single country. Each country has its risks, each country has its culture. You cannot only translate your compliance policies into Portuguese and Spanish, and expect that they're going to be enforced here. You must take into consideration our risks, our culture, and all the requirements of the enforcement bodies."

Three Markets, Three Realities
Filipe Batich (Brazil) highlighted an emerging and underappreciated risk: organised crime is actively infiltrating legitimate sectors of the Brazilian economy, financial institutions, fintechs, and cash-heavy industries like fuel distribution. The due diligence implications for any company operating in Brazil are significant and increasingly urgent.

Silvia Almeida, speaking from her own experience managing compliance at Casa dos Ventos, Brazil, gave a striking illustration of how risk assumptions are being overturned in practice.

"We learned through those operations that those small clients are the ones that are high risk. They are more accessible to the criminal entities. Those small businesses, the bakeries, the convenience stores, the gas stations, those are the ones that are really high risk now in Brazil, because we don't know if they are licit or illicit."

Gabriela Mancero (Colombia) described one of the region's most developed and genuinely enforced compliance frameworks, with fines reaching USD 100 million, coordinated multi-agency enforcement actions, and obligations that extend through the entire supply chain.

Gabriela Mancero, Peña Mancero Abogados, Colombia adds:

"Don't be mistaken. If your company is not big enough to have to comply, you will still be subject to supervision, because companies are subject to liability for their intermediaries as well. Agents, suppliers, any intermediary involved will have to comply. You won't be chosen unless you comply."

Yoab Bitran (Chile) pointed to the gap between strong legislation and enforcement capacity that characterises much of the region while flagging Chile's landmark Criminal Liability for Corporations Act as a genuine game-changer. Covering 250 categories of crime, it means that having an effective compliance programme is no longer just good governance. In Chile, it is your legal protection.

Yoab Bitran, Albagli Zaliasnik, Chile concludes:

"Companies don't have to compromise their ethical standards to do business in the region, but they need an effective and tailored compliance programme to make this successful. A company should know what are the red lines, the boundaries that should not be crossed. Sometimes the only choice is to leave a market or not to enter it in the first place."

The Conversation Doesn't End Here
This session was the first in a series. Whether you're reviewing your compliance framework against local requirements, trying to understand your exposure in a specific jurisdiction, or entering a new Latin American market for the first time, AGA representative firms in Brazil, Colombia, Chile and from across the region are best placed to help. 

AGA operates across 100+ countries. Wherever you need trusted, local expertise, we can make the right introduction. Contact Sophia Rook-Blackstone in the first instance.

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