An operation triggered by Public Ministry of São Paulo (MPSP) on the morning of this Tuesday (9), targets two bus companies, which operate municipal lines in São Paulo, identified as intermediaries for laundering money from organized crime.
Sources linked to the investigation point out that the companies were co-opted and are now controlled by the PCC, the state's main criminal faction. O prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya responsible for the MP's investigation against the PCC says that the faction already has the contours of a “mafia”.
João Henrique Martins, coordinator of the Integrated Command and Control Center of the São Paulo Public Security Secretariat, explains that today's operation “is a clear demonstration of what the PCC network is and where it has arrived”.
For Martins, the criminal organization becomes more sophisticated when the cost of responding to crime is low, what was initially a gang is connected to a large business network. “Today’s event we are talking about the network. We are talking about more than one gang, people who are not in the original PCC structure, but are around, making a lot of money,” she explains.
The CICC coordinator explains that the criminal organization goes through an evolutionary process, starting from the bottom, dominating the municipality, and then moving upwards, expanding its actions to foreign territories.
In the process of dominating the municipality, the group enters into all activity models. Martins exemplifies: “Waste contracts, transport contracts, contracts related to municipal public services where some level of corruption by public or private agents already occurs. If organized crime is installed in that region, it needs to have some level of territorial dominance.”
When it moves to the international level, the criminal group begins to connect with foreign gangs, in two ways: logistics and finance.
“In addition to the possibility of money laundering, there is the possibility of direct gain due to the cartels that already existed, it is the perfect storm for criminal activity”, concludes Martins.
Source: CNN Brasil
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