Paula Leite

Associate Director

  • Americas
  • Ethics, Compliance and Governance
  • Investigations, Litigation and Forensics
  • ESG and Sustainable Business

Paula is an Associate Director in Control Risks’ Compliance, Forensics and Investigations practice, based in our São Paulo office. She works on projects such as due diligence investigations, background checks, internal investigations, and litigation and dispute support for clients that are looking to invest in or are already operating in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Examples of Paula’s recent projects include:

  • Reputational and ESG due diligence investigations for foreign investment funds looking to acquire assets in Brazil’s energy sector; due to the complex nature of the sector in the country, the investigations helped our clients understand the risks involved in the transactions, ranging from political and regulatory risks to the assets’ environmental impacts and relationship to local communities.
  • Due diligences into companies that have complex political relationships in Brazil that helped our foreign clients better understand the local context and reputational risks associated with doing business with these counterparts.
  • Internal fraud investigations for multinational companies in the Southern Cone that included public records research, human intelligence gathering, asset tracing and document review.
  • Prior to joining Control Risks, Paula worked as a journalist for more than 15 years, mostly as a reporter and editor at Folha de S.Paulo, one of Brazil’s leading newspapers. Paula was awarded the Vladimir Herzog Award for creating and coordinating the Altered State multimedia series, a comprehensive journalistic investigation into drug policies around the globe. She has also been directly involved in the coverage of significant news events, such as the 2016 US presidential elections and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    Paula holds a master’s degree in business from the Insper Institute of Education and Research and an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of São Paulo. She is a native Portuguese speaker and is fluent in English, as well as having a working knowledge of French, German and Spanish.

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