Most companies that sell to a municipality don’t fear “investigation” in the abstract. They fear the day a letter arrives from the Public Prosecutor’s Office or an Audit Court request hits the inbox and, overnight, an ordinary contract starts to look suspicious. The instinct is almost always the same: respond fast, explain everything, “clear it up.” The problem is that, in an election season, a letter is rarely just a request for information. It is often the first chapter of a narrative. And when a company responds without method, what should have been clarification turns into contradictions, reputational exposure, and—at the worst end—a criminal case.
The letter is not paperwork: it’s a slice of the story someone chose to tell
A letter selects facts. It rarely asks “what happened?”; it asks “why did this happen this way?” The first move, then, is to read it as an embryonic accusation—even when the tone is neutral. Which dates, people, payments, amendments, performance certifications were highlighted? What was left out? What assumptions are baked into the questions?
This is where companies rush. Instead of answering what was asked, they start writing “their version” of the contract, adding details no one requested and, without noticing, creating new angles for a second round of requests. In oversight matters, excess narrative is an expensive luxury.
Who speaks for the company matters as much as what will be said
In smaller towns, the owner, the operations lead, and the finance lead are often the same person. That has a consequence: any impulsive written reply becomes, in practice, an informal statement. Depending on the case, an internal controller, a prosecutor, or an auditor will read it as an admission of facts, an assumption of responsibility, and sometimes a technical confession.
That’s why an institutional response needs one simple rule: one voice, one final document, one timeline. If different departments send parallel versions, or each manager answers “their own way,” the risk is not merely looking disorganized. The risk is creating internal divergences that later get treated as “inconsistencies”—and inconsistency is the favorite fuel of any investigation.
The most common mistake is trying to “solve it” by over-explaining
There is a difference between clarifying and justifying. Clarifying means providing verifiable data; justifying means explaining why you did something and, almost always, opening space to debate intent. In sensitive matters, intent is precisely what oversight bodies try to infer. The more you write “we did this because…,” the more you expand the room for interpretations about motive, convenience, and potential favoritism.
A strong response stands on documents, chronology, and objective criteria. You don’t “tell a story”; you demonstrate a flow. This is not about being evasive, much less about “stonewalling.” It’s about understanding that a company’s role before a state authority is to be precise. And here, precision means answering what was asked, with matching support, without embellishment.
The first strategic decision: information request, disguised interview, or an investigation already underway?
Not every letter has the same weight. Some are purely administrative. Others are clearly tied to an ongoing proceeding. Others, in practice, are a written “interview,” with open-ended questions designed to secure commitments and contradictions.
In criminal investigations led by prosecutors, it is common for a formal procedure to exist, governed by specific rules—such as those in CNMP Resolution 181/2017. What you put in writing can be folded into a future evidentiary record and later read through a criminal lens. The same is true for audit requests: the language differs, but the logic is similar. Your reply becomes a piece of the file.
This initial classification drives three things: tone, level of detail, and—most importantly—whether you need counsel.
The response only becomes safe when there is method: chronology, support, and consistency
If you asked me for a single organizing principle for responding well, I would say: consistency. Consistency of dates, documents, values, responsible parties, and criteria.
In practice, that means the company must reconstruct—before replying—a minimum timeline of the contract: award, performance, certifications, amendments (if any), payments, notifications, and scope changes. And it must align that timeline with documents that actually exist—not with someone’s memory of how it “must have been.”
This step is, in essence, a micro internal review: short, focused, evidence-driven. The company gathers facts, identifies what can be proven, separates noise, and only then drafts. The logic is the same as what we discuss in a serious internal investigation: clarify without incriminating, preserve evidence, avoid loose versions, and protect both people and the organization.
In election season, method matters twice. The environment is louder, political disputes contaminate technical readings, and one poorly phrased sentence becomes a headline-ready excerpt.
Asking for more time is not “looking guilty”: it is governance
Another common fear in small municipalities is that “asking for an extension will make us look guilty.” It won’t. A well-grounded extension request signals responsibility and governance: you are saying you will not improvise an answer about public money, contracts, and potential legal consequences.
More than that, asking for time avoids the worst scenario: replying incompletely today and “correcting” tomorrow. Serial corrections are almost always read as after-the-fact adjustments, and they erode credibility. In investigations, credibility is an asset.
The invisible risk: self-incrimination through excessive goodwill
It needs to be said plainly: not every company is a neutral “witness” in this story. Sometimes the company is a regular vendor. Sometimes it becomes the subject of the inquiry. Sometimes it is used as a proxy in a political fight over the municipality. And sometimes it is treated as a potential beneficiary of an irregularity.
When a company doesn’t know which role it is playing, it tends to respond as if everything were neutral—and then hands over, in writing, the elements that later get used against it. In simple terms: it supplies the frame that was missing for the accusation.
No conspiracy is required. Oversight bodies work with fragments. They assemble pieces. If you volunteer the pieces that complete the puzzle, you helped build the case. That’s why calibrating scope, sticking to what is necessary, and writing precisely are not “aggressive tactics.” They are institutional self-protection.
What changes when the vendor is small: the risk becomes personal
In companies with revenue around R$ 10 million or less, the risk is often more human than legal. The owner signs, the owner speaks, the owner replies, the owner sends voice notes, the owner tries to “fix it at city hall.” And when trouble starts, it stops being “the company’s matter” and becomes “the person’s matter.”
If there is one recommendation worth gold in a municipal election year, it is this: separate the individual from the institutional response. That doesn’t mean bureaucracy. It means defining—now—who centralizes communications, which channels are used, and how decisions are recorded. What looks like “formalism” in calm times becomes a shield when the environment turns hostile.
The shortest path to get through the letter safely
The shortest path is not the fastest. It is the most disciplined.
It starts by reading the letter as a narrative slice, then reconstructing facts (with documents), defining one institutional voice, asking for time when needed, and drafting a response that stands on verifiable support—without over-justifying and without improvisation. And when there is any sign of sensitivity—high amounts, amendments, contested certifications, clustered payments, direct interaction with public agents—bring defense counsel in from the first move.
In an election year, that’s even more important: what is at stake is not only the formal outcome of the procedure. It is reputation, contract continuity, eligibility to keep bidding, and often the survival of the business.
If you contract with municipalities, the best moment to set this method is before the first letter arrives. The second best is the day it does.
