About

A multinational chain headquartered in Chile, Falabella is the largest department store in South America. The Peruvian legal team is led by self-regulating corporate legal manager, Alfredo Daniel Rivero Nieto, who has amassed 11 years of experience in the company and is the founder of the company’s first in-house legal department, as well as promoting its corporatisation. The legal team is made up of five lawyers and three legal assistants and is composed of two areas that are in constant synergy; the first one, “consumer conflict resolution and competition” – is a procedural area responsible for solving all consumer disputes which result from administrative procedures initiated in the Institute for the defense of competition and the protection of intellectual property. ‘The idea is to minimise legal risks by avoiding the imposition of sanctions and contributing to safeguarding the reputation of the companies that make up the Falabella Group. This team is led by Javier Enrique Mallqui Bravo, who stands out for his extensive jurisprudential knowledge when defining the most beneficial legal strategies for the company’, says Nieto. The second division is, “regulations and preventative-control”, an area which aims to model behaviours which may violate business-related regulations through the following lines of action of training, new bulletins as well as monitoring and auditing. This team is led by Rosa Margarita Vásquez Laurente, whose role is to promote a culture of respect and regulatory compliance within each business. Establishing these two areas of consumer protection and fair competition capacities in the group introduced a new and more organised way of operation: ‘The legal department’s management structure has been reengineered in the last year, changing from a predominantly reactive culture to a more preventative approach with emphasis on regulatory compliance in matters of consumer protection and unfair competition’, explains Nieto. The self-regulation of corporate legal management is now part of the operational legal affairs department, managed by Carlos Suarez Huerta, a lawyer with broad experience in the business sector and is in charge of other specialised management areas within the company. Furthermore, Falabella is the leading company with the least amount of sanctions in the department store industry. The significant reduction of sanctions and the success achieved has been possible thanks to the legal team’s cooperative work with various business managers, and to the commitment to achieve a reputation of transparency in the industry.