Liquidation of two Brazilian cooperatives affects groups with about 8.3 thousand members
Key Facts
Brazil’s central bank issued two out-of-court liquidation orders on November 12, 2026: one for the Rural Credit Cooperative of Agreste Alagoano, known as Cooperagre, and the other for Roma, a cooperative consortium group administrator. The bank said the Cooperagre order was prompted by “serious violations of the rules governing its activities.” In Roma’s case, the violations concerned the management of consortium groups and included aspects of quota sales, participant exclusion rates and the institution’s compensation structure. Liquidation is a measure to remove an institution from the market, while the bank said Roma’s liquidation aims to do so in an orderly manner while safeguarding participants’ rights. The bank distinguished between the two orders based on the nature of the violations, citing specific reasons concerning Roma’s activities while describing what it found at Cooperagre as violations of governing rules.
In June 2026, Roma managed about 28 consortium groups, comprising nearly 16 thousand active quotas belonging to 8.3 thousand members. These figures give a picture of the institution’s activity before the liquidation order and show that the measure affects groups with thousands of participants. The bank asked members to follow the liquidator’s guidance and official channels. This includes monitoring instructions concerning the consortium groups; the bank said participants’ rights should be safeguarded during the liquidation proceedings. It also stressed that the order does not constitute a final judgment on individual responsibility, which will be examined in separate proceedings.
The bank said Roma’s violations included the sale of consortium quotas, high participant exclusion rates and the institution’s compensation structure. It said the violations were structural and continued despite supervisory measures and penalties imposed over time. The bank added that it saw “no reasonable prospect of a settlement through less stringent measures,” leading to the liquidation order. According to the bank’s statement, this means the order was based on the persistence of problems after previous supervisory interventions, rather than on a single incident cited in the statement. Individual responsibility will remain subject to separate proceedings, while the liquidator oversees the institution’s exit from the market.
At the sector level, Roma ranked 49th by number of active members among 129 institutions in June 2026, according to the central bank. The bank described Cooperagre as a small independent credit cooperative, classified as “classic” within supervisory segment S5. In September 2025, its share was about 0.0000222% of the Brazilian national financial system’s total assets, putting its size in the context of the system as a whole. The bank said Cooperagre held deposits through financial instruments covered by the Brazilian Credit Cooperative Guarantee Fund. It also said the assets of Cooperagre’s former managers are unavailable under the law, and that investigations into responsibility could lead to administrative proceedings or the referral of findings to the competent authorities.
The central bank appointed SMM Regimes Especiais de Empresas Ltda. as Roma’s liquidator and set September 14, 2026, as the statutory start date for the liquidation. Under the order, the liquidator was granted broad management and liquidation powers. This is part of the arrangements for carrying out the measure announced on November 12, while the bank urged participants to follow the liquidator’s instructions and official channels. Separately from the liquidation of the two institutions, the central bank’s calendar lists a meeting of the National Monetary Council on November 19, 2026. The bank did not link the meeting date to the liquidation orders.