About

Ricardo Sasaki has lead the legal team at Ajinomoto do Brasil Indústria e Comércio de Alimentos, as corporate legal director, and general director of the legal department, intellectual property and government relations of Ajinomoto Brazil and affiliates of the Ajinomoto Group in Latin America since 2009. Ajinomoto is a global food production company specialising in prepared food and spice mixtures containing umami, a traditional Japanese flavour, and considered a taste of amino acids found naturally in many types of fish and meat broths, green tea and tomatoes and much more. Sasaki’s legal background saw him study law in Brazil, the US and Japan to PhD level making him ideally suited to running the legal affairs of the Brazilian and Latin American divisions of this Japanese-headquartered global operation. During his tenure, Sasaki has overseen a change in approach within the legal function by introducing a “culture of conciliation” instead of a “culture of litigation” for employees, law firms, lawyers and other stakeholders and interested parties. This approach is designed to lessen confrontation and make the legal department proactive towards business. In this vein, he created and implemented the “PRELI” (Prevention and Reduction of Litigation) project and signed a commitment agreement with the Court of Justice of the State of São Paulo to cooperate with the judiciary to reduce the number of lawsuits in Brazilian society. Due to the success of these actions the department has achieved numerous industry recognitions and awards. On the restructuring of the department Sasaki says that, ‘during my time in my current role, I was able to realise innovative ideas and implement projects, contributing to the increase of the reputation and improvement of brand values’. Sasaki has overseen the training of the legal team on conciliation and mediation mechanisms and the insertion of a clause of non-litigious mechanisms to solve problem in all contracts of Ajinomoto Brazil using the “Permanent Nucleus for Conflict Resolution by Methods of Consensus” of the Court of Justice of the State of São Paulo to mediate disputes. He is also preparing a policy of compliance to the prevention of acts of corruption, based on new anti-corruption legislation of Brazil, USA-FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977), UK Bribery Act of 2010, Anti-Corruption Law and Unfair Competition Prevention Act of Japan.