The Primeiro Comando da Capital ("First Capital Command", Portuguese pronunciation:[pɾiˈmejɾukoˈmɐ̃dudakapiˈtaw], PCC) is a Brazilian organized crime syndicate. According to a 2023 The Economist report, the PCC is Latin America's biggest drug gang, with a membership of 40,000 lifetime members plus 60,000 "contractors".[4] Its name refers to the São Paulo state capital, the city of São Paulo.
The group is based in the state of São Paulo and is active throughout Brazil, South America, West Africa and Europe. An international expansion fueled by the cocaine trade saw the PCC establish a profitable partnership with the Italian 'Ndrangheta and, as of 2023, run over 50% of Brazil's drug exports to Europe. Through the cocaine trade routes to Europe, the PCC also established itself as a central player in the West African cocaine trade, with its members being able to exert control over neighbourhoods in cities such as Lagos and Abuja.[4][14] According to a leaked Portuguese intelligence report, the group also has around 1,000 associates in Lisbon.[4]
The PCC is often mentioned to have a different doctrine to other Brazilian cartels, with a business model that favors the quiet expansion of markets over violent and expensive turf wars[2] and confrontations with the state that would draw unwanted attention.[17] The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime noted that the PCC's ability to negotiate with rivals rather than expelling them has permitted the group to make use of preestablished criminal networks and preexisting logistics know-how along the cocaine value chain, encouraging peaceful cooperation between different groups and producing greater economic efficiency by reducing operating costs.[2][17] However, the group has been responsible for waves of extreme violence, including terrorism, upon having their interests threatened.[18]
History
The PCC was founded on August 31, 1993, by eight prisoners at Taubaté Penitentiary, called Piranhão (Big Piranha) in the state of São Paulo. At the time, this was considered the safest jail in the state.[19]
The group initially got together during a football game. The prisoners had been transferred from the city of São Paulo to the Piranhão as punishment for bad behavior, and they decided to name their team the Capital Command—a name which would stick, as the game was followed by the brutal killing and decapitation of both the deputy director and a prisoner with special privileges. The head of the latter being put on a stake.[20]
The initial members were Misael "Misa" Aparecido da Silva, Wander Eduardo "Cara Gorda" (Fat Face) Ferreira, Antônio Carlos Roberto da Paixão, Isaías "Esquisito" (Weird) Moreira do Nascimento, Ademar "Dafé" dos Santos, Antônio "Bicho Feio" (Ugly Beast) Carlos dos Santos, César "Césinha" (Little César) Augusto Roris da Silva and José "Geleião" (Big Jelly) Márcio Felício.
PCC, which was also formerly referred to as the Party of Crime, and as 15.3.3 (following the order of the letters "P" and "C" in the former Brazilian alphabet, which did not contain the letter "K"), was founded with a clear agenda, to "fight the oppression inside the São Paulo penitentiary system" and to "avenge the death of 111 prisoners," victims of the October 2, 1992 Carandiru massacre, when the São Paulo State Military Police stormed the now-defunct Casa de Detenção and killed the prisoners from the 9th cell block in the process.
The group made use of the Chinese taititu ("yin yang") symbol as their emblem, saying it represented "a way to balance good and evil with wisdom".[1] In February 2001, Idemir "Sombra" (Shadow) Carlos Ambrósio became the most prominent leader of the organization when he coordinated, by cell phone, simultaneous rebellions in 29 São Paulo state prisons, in which 16 prisoners were killed. "Sombra," also referred to as "father," was beaten to death in the Piranhão five months later by five members of the criminal faction in an internal struggle for the general command of the PCC. The PCC was led by "Geleião" and "Cesinha," responsible for the alliance with another criminal organization, Rio de Janeiro'sComando Vermelho. Following the alliance with Comando Vermelho, the gang adopted Vermelho's far-left beliefs and began advocating for revolution and the destruction of Brazil's capitalist system.[21]
Geleião and Cesinha, from the Bangu Penitentiary where they were held, went on to coordinate violent attacks against public buildings. Considered radicals by another moderate current of the PCC, they used terrorism to intimidate authorities of the prison system and were withdrawn from leadership in November 2002, when the leadership was taken over by the current leader of the organization Marcos "Marcola" Willians Herbas Camacho. The organization then put a death bounty on Geleião and Cesinha, for having testified to the police and for creating the Terceiro Comando da Capital (Third Capital Command, TCC).
Under the leadership of Marcola, also known as "Playboy," currently detained for bank robbery, the PCC took part in the March 2003 murder of Judge Antônio José Machado Dias, who ran the Penitentiary Readaptation Center (CRP) from Presidente Bernardes, São Paulo, currently Brazil's most strict supermax-style prison. The PCC also announced its objective to use prison uprisings as a way to demoralize the government and to destroy the CRP.
A turning point for the PCC was set in 2014 when it pivoted away from domestic sales and turned towards the more lucrative export market. The group cemented its influence over the Port of Santos, the biggest port in South America, and evolved into a multinational organization with presence and influence across five continents through alliances with other groups such as the 'Ndrangheta as well as Mexican, Colombian, Russian and African criminal networks. GI-TOC fieldwork highlighted that the value chain often starts with stolen or second-hand vehicles in Brazil exchanged for drugs in countries such as Bolivia and Paraguay.[2]
From 2016, the group cemented its influence over the Paraguayan border, an important trade route for cocaine supplied from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia and for arms trafficked from Paraguay and the United States. It involved the murder of Jorge Rafaat, a Brazilian drug lord of Lebanese ancestry. Rafaat's armored Hummer truck was ambushed in Pedro Juan Caballero by more than 100 mercenaries, including a Toyota SW4 featuring a concealed Browning .50 MG which fired more than 400 rounds into the drug lord's truck. The 10-minute shootout left Rafaat dead and 8 more injured.[22] About 40 of his associates were subsequently murdered.[23]
This allowed for a major expansion in the following years, with the Brazilian Public Prosecutor's Office estimating that the PCC had reached over 30,000 'baptized' members in 2018, with at least 2 million more allied to the group.[2]
In 2016, the breakdown of a 20-year truce between the PCC and the Red Command led to a massive uptick in violence across Brazil, with the PCC embarking on an aggressive expansion campaign by absorbing less organized gangs and financing local groups to operate as proxies against the CV across the country, such as the B13 gang in Acre and the CV's rivals in Rio de Janeiro.[24][25]
In early 2017, a series of gruesome prison riots made headlines worldwide as the PCC fought for control of the North Region against the Família do Norte and the Red Command, then allied to the FDN. On January 1, dozens of PCC prisoners were massacred at the Anísio Jobim Penitentiary Complex in Manaus after a prison riot, with the PCC retaliating in a prison riot in Boa Vista five days later. Dismemberments, beheadings and prisoners being burned alive were commonplace during both riots.[26]
In 2021, the "King of the Frontier" Fahd Jamil Georges, who ruled over drug trafficking and the jogo do bicho in the Ponta Porã region for over five decades, turned himself in to authorities seeking protection, claiming that the PCC was after him.[23][27]
Over the next months, a wave of contract killings fueled fears that Paraguay might become a narcostate. In May 2022, the Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci was shot dead while on honeymoon with his wife in Baru, a tourist island off Cartagena, Colombia. Initial investigations raised the possibility of the PCC being behind the hit, until Paraguayan and Uruguayan cartels allied to the PCC were implicated in the murder.[28]
A year earlier, the mayor of Pedro Juan Caballero, José Carlos Acevedo, had also been murdered when leaving the city hall.[29][23][30]
On 15 December 2021, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced new sanctions against organized crime actors worldwide such as the PCC, along with Mexican cartels and Chinese groups linked to the fentanyl trade.[31]
The PCC's deals with Western European criminal organizations, especially the 'Ndrangheta, have facilitated exports into Europe, including through West Africa, from where the group has become a central player in supplying Africa's cocaine market. The 2020 arrest of a Brazilian drug trafficker linked to the 'Ndrangheta and senior PCC members in Maputo has also contributed to evidence that the group has been active in southern and eastern Africa for years.[2]
The PCC has been noted for its ability to create ad hoc and structured business partnerships with other Brazilian groups (including private entities and the state) as well as with foreign criminal networks such as Nigerian, Cape Verdean, Mozambican, Lebanese, Russian, Italian and Eastern European mafias.[2]
By 2022, the PCC had become one of the world's most complex criminal organizations, able to operate across a spectrum of illicit supply chains including drugs, firearms, gold mining and vehicles.[2] Those operations are rooted in an extensive financial infrastructure that has penetrated the legal economy in businesses such as public transport, trash disposal and real estate investment[4] and that extends to legal and financial support to its members through different divisions, called sintonias. This organizational flexibility, combined with a high degree of commercial autonomy for its members, has underpinned the PCC's expansion.[2][17]
The PCC received countrywide attention with a series of attacks that took place from May 12 to May 17 in 2006. The main targets were public establishments such as police stations, justice forums, buses, etc. The attacks took place as a response to a state government plan to transfer prisoners to a high-security prison in Presidente Venceslau and represented the bloodiest assault of its kind in the history of Brazil's richest state, São Paulo. The attacks were organized by gang members in prison via cell phone.[32]
2012 attacks
By June 2012, another wave of attacks against the police began. In May 28, six PCC members were killed in a shootout with ROTA members. However, investigations later showed that one suspect, 31-year old Anderson Minhano was taken from the scene alive and placed in a ROTA cruiser, where it was discovered that he was wanted for the point-blank murder of a police officer two months earlier. The PCC member was then taken to Ayrton Senna highway where he was tortured and executed on the side of the road, an action witnessed by a civilian passerby. As a result, the PCC leadership ordered retaliation against military police officers, allowing members with debts to the organization to clear their slates by murdering police officers.[33][17][34][35]
Throughout the next few months, off-duty police were targeted while driving to and from work, grocery shopping or moonlighting, and buses were set on fire. Police retaliated, with the number of killings by police increasing dramatically, as well as reports of multiple homicides at drug sale points by police vigilante groups.[17]
By December, the wave of violence had subsided. By the end of 2012, 106 police officers[36] had been killed throughout the year, with 775[37] civilians being killed as a result of police intervention, 84 of those by ROTA.[38]
2017 Paraguay heist
In April 2017 the company Prosegur located in Ciudad del Este, in the Triple Frontier of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, was robbed by a group of at least 30 men carrying heavy firepower.[39] Early reports said 40 million dollars were stolen, although this was later revised to eight million.[40][41] The group used automatic rifles, infrared sights, anti-aircraft guns, explosives, bullet-proof getaway cars, speedboats and blocked avenues with torched cars and trucks, locals described the heist as "movie-like".[42]
Since the Modus operandi was similar to that of past robberies in Campinas, Ribeirão Preto and Santos in 2015 and 2016, the PCC was the main suspect for the heist, but this was never confirmed.[43] It was the biggest robbery in the history of Paraguay.[44] A police officer was killed and four people were injured.[45][46]
2023 foiled terror attacks
On 22 March 2023, the Federal Police launched Operation Sequaz, which sought to apprehend 11 PCC members across four states who had planned to assassinate several Brazilian authorities, such as Senator and former Lava Jato judge Sergio Moro and São Paulo state prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya. As Minister of Justice in the Bolsonaro administration, Moro had been responsible for the transfer of Marcola and 21 other senior PCC members from state to federal penitentiaries. Incumbent Minister of Justice Flávio Dino commemorated the operation, "sending his regards to the Federal Police for their important work".[47] Brazilian President Lula da Silva questioned the operation, calling it "another one of Moro's setups".[48]
With intelligence collected during Operation Sequaz, the Federal Police also learned that the PCC had sent a three-man team to Brasilia to plan for "a mission in the Federal District". Among the cellphones of the suspects that were seized during the operation, the Federal Police found pictures of residences belonging to Arthur Lira, President of the Chamber of Deputies, and Rodrigo Pacheco, President of the Federal Senate. The leader for Moro's planned assassination, Janerson Aparecido Mariano Gomes ("Nefo"), claimed that the PCC had created a division ("sintonia", or "tuning") responsible for high-secrecy and high-risk operations in 2014, called the Sintonia Restrita ("restricted tuning"). Sintonia Restrita members would be trained by the Paraguayan People's Army and operate under direct orders from the PCC leadership, known as the Sintonia Geral e Final ("general and final tuning"), mainly in attacks against authorities including politicians and members of the Judiciary.[18] The planned terror attacks sought to retaliate for the 2017 prohibition of intimate visits in federal penitentiaries, as well as Law 13,964/2019, proposed by Moro. Dubbed the "anticrime package", Law 13,964 modified 14 laws and hardened the Brazilian prison system, making it harder for PCC leaderships to command gangs from inside prisons. On 19 July, the PF also found rock blasting explosives in a house belonging to PCC members in Curitiba, to be used in an attack against Moro.[18]
Statute
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Primeiro Comando da Capital has a statute with various rules for the criminal organization. Disobeying the rules, says the statute, carries a penalty of death.
On May 16, 2006, a couple was arrested with a copy of the statute.[49]
In June 2023, the São Paulo Civil Police arrested Garip Uç, a Turkish chemist associated with Hezbollah during an operation in Praia Grande. Investigations later pointed to Moroccan hashish being imported to Brazil by a criminal network that involved the PCC, 'Ndrangheta, the Balkan Mafia and Hezbollah, including Barakat clan entrepreneurs who operated in the Triple Frontier.[8]
According to investigations carried out by both Europol and the Brazilian Federal Police, the PCC has ties to the 'Ndrangheta, considered the most bloodthirsty group of the Italian Mafia and the richest and most powerful criminal syndicate in the West.[68]
This was evident after the arrests of high-ranking 'Ndrangheta bosses and members in Brazil, such as Rocco Morabito (known as the “Cocaine King of Milan”), cousin of Giuseppe Morabito (one of the most powerful 'Ndrangheta bosses) and considered one of the organization's main drug traffickers.[69]
According to investigations, Morabito is considered one of the main associates of André Macedo Oliveira (known as "André do Rap"), one of the current leaders of the PCC and considered one of the most bloodthirsty drug lords in Latin America.[70]
^He was executed by the Primeiro Comando da Capital at the behest of Marcola himself in retaliation for the fact that Cesinha had ordered the murder of Marcola's former wife, Ana Maria Olivatto in October 2002.
^According to the São Paulo Police and the Public Ministry of São Paulo, he may have fled to Baixada Santista (on the coast of São Paulo) or Paraguay.
^According to the Public Ministry of São Paulo, Tuta's last known whereabouts would be Bolivia, where he is supposedly currently hiding.
^Although the motive for his murder is still unknown, there is a suspicion by the Civil Police of São Paulo that he was killed in revenge for the murders of Gege do Mangue and Paca (the two PCC members mentioned above).
^Galarraga Gortázar, Naiara; Alessi, Gil (13 June 2020). "PCC, la hermandad de los criminales" (in Spanish). El País. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
