Brazil prosecutors target gangs with mega-operation against fraud and money laundering

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian prosecutors on Thursday launched a mega-operation to dismantle fraud, money laundering and tax evasion, in the latest phase of an investigation targeting criminal gangs.

The move comes as the Trump administration has designated a number of gangs in Latin America as foreign terrorist organizations, though none in Brazil yet.

Following a visit to Washington earlier this week, Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro said he lobbied U.S. President Donald Trump to add First Capital Command, known as PCC, and another Brazilian gang, the Red Command, or CV, to that list, a move President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ’s government opposes. Instead, Lula says, the first phase of Thursday’s operation – which took place in August – is evidence that Brazil is fighting these criminal organizations on its own terms.

Lula, who also previously met with Trump and said the two didn't discuss the issue of gangs, and Sen. Bolsonaro have said they will run for president in the October presidential elections, in which public security will likely be a wedge issue.

Last year, authorities uncovered a sprawling criminal network that infiltrated and appropriated parts of the fuel industry, connected to the financial sector through money laundering schemes involving members of the PCC. At the time, authorities seized 1.2 billion reais (about $220 million) in assets.

Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service said in a statement Thursday that following that operation, authorities discovered six more fintech companies acting as criminal parallel banks that processed 26 billion reais ($5 billion) between 2022 and 2025.

Experts say that targeting criminal organizations’ financial operations is essential to reducing their power, which has ballooned in the past decades, and more effective than deadly police raids in Brazil’s poor, urban communities.

Last year, an operation in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas left more than 120 people dead. Rio de Janeiro's then-governor Cláudio Castro described the local criminal groups as “narco-terrorists,” echoing the Trump administration's language.

“Armed confrontation with young drug traffickers from the outskirts is ineffective and fails to deal with the complexity of money laundering and its links to financial crime,” said Luis Flavio Sapori, a sociologist and public safety expert at Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais.

PCC and CV are Brazil’s main two criminal gangs. They were founded in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro state prisons, respectively, and have now spread throughout the country.

Sapori believes that politics will play a role in whether the Trump administration sets its sights on Brazil's gangs.

“It will depend far more on the ability of either the Lula government or the Bolsonaro-aligned opposition to persuade” the U.S. administration, he said.

AP journalist Mauricio Savarese contributed to this report from Sao Paulo.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Savarese reported from São Paulo.