Brazil

Law No. 6,385/1976, known as the Brazilian Securities Law, establishes the foundational federal framework for the country's capital markets by defining what constitutes a security and regulating all public offerings, exchanges, and financial intermediaries. Entering into immediate force in December 1976, the statute created the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM) as the independent regulatory authority empowered to supervise publicly traded corporations, audit market participants, and penalize market manipulation or insider trading. The CVM enforces strict administrative sanctions, including corporate fines capped at R$ 50 million or three times the illegal advantage gained, alongside pursuing federal prison sentences of up to eight years for criminal market abuse. In its current operational state, the law serves as a highly active mechanism for digital finance, utilizing its broad investment contract definition to assert jurisdiction over tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), decentralized finance components, and crypto-assets that exhibit security characteristics.