Estação Newspaper: "Bolivia becomes a sanctuary for Narcosur, the PCC drug cartel" - Narco State Bolivia
A report by journalist Marcelo Godoy, published by the newspaper The State of San Paulo, Brazil, indicates that Bolivia has become a kind of sanctuary of 'Narcosur', the drug cartel of the Primer Comando de la Capital (PCC), from Brazil.
It indicates that the Federal Police (PF)'s difficulty in acting in the neighboring country and the central geographic location in South America have transformed Bolivia into the sanctuary of Narcosur, as investigators called the cartel that brings together representatives of the top leadership of the Primer Comando de la Capital (PCC) and associated with international drug trafficking.
Holidays in jewels, medical clinics, restaurants, haciendas and walks, together with their families, with tranquility in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, sign in the report published by this Brazilian media.
Unpublished photographs and messages obtained from the cell phones of drug trafficker Anderson Lacerda Pereira, alias El Gordo, and intelligence information from the Federal Police and the Civil Police of San Pablo demonstrate the ostentation and daily life of cartel leaders.
Due to a network of medical clinics in San Pablo, El Gordo would be investing in the same red in Bolivia.
“The Narcosur, the PCC cartel, is the criminal organization that is growing the most today in the world”, says attorney of justice Marcio Sergio Christino, responsible in 2002 for the first complaint against the high command of the faction, when Marco Willians Herbas Camacho, alias Marcola, begins to rise as leader of the group.
According to the report, Peruvian and Colombian drugs join Bolivian cocaine.
It indicates that the Brazilian narcos are transported in planes and helicopters to rest in the playas of the northeast of Brazil, from where they do business with the ‘ndrine’, the families that are part of the ‘Ndrangheta’, the mafia of Calabria. The most powerful of criminal organizations in Italy is down to 40% of all drugs that the PCC deals in Europe. This is the "impuesto" so that the cocaine shipment from America del Sur can circulate across the continent. The kilo of drugs purchased in Santa Cruz de la Sierra for US$1,000, in Europe costs up to US$35,000.
The newspaper Estadao de Sao Paulo, of Brazil, affirms in a report that Bolivia has become the sanctuary of the "Narcorsur", the drug cartel of Peru, Colombia and Bolivia that through the First Capital Command (PCC), It exports cocaine to Europe destined for the Calabrian mafia.
The information indicates that the geographic location of our country and the police work favor this illegal practice.
The Primeiro Comando da Capital (usually called in Spanish Primer Comando de la Capital, also known as PCC) is a Brazilian criminal organization. According to a 2012 Brazilian government report, it is the largest criminal organization in Brazil with almost 20,000 members, 6,000 of whom are in prison.
The difficulty of the Federal Police (PF) in the neighboring country and the central geographic location in South America have turned Bolivia into the sanctuary of Narcosur, as investigators call the cartel that brings together representatives of the First Command of the Capital (PCC) and associated with international drug trafficking. They invest in jewelry, medical clinics, restaurants, farms and walk safely with their families in the Santa Cruz de La Sierra region, the group's center of power and a passageway for the drug that, coming from Peru and Colombia, joins the properly Bolivian cocaine.
From there, Brazilian "narcos" travel in planes and helicopters to spend their holidays on the beaches of the Northeast, where they close deals with the Ndrine, the families that make up the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. The most powerful of Italy's criminal organizations, it holds 40% of all the drugs the CCP deals in Europe. This is the tax for cocaine shipments from South America to circulate across the continent. There, a kilo of the drug, purchased in Santa Cruz de La Sierra for US$1,000, reaches up to US$35,000.
Unpublished photographs and messages seized on the cell phones of the trafficker Anderson Lacerda Pereira, o Gordo, and information from the intelligence of the prison system, the Federal Police and the Civil Police in São Paulo show the ostentation and daily life of the cartel's leaders. Owner of a network of medical clinics in São Paulo, Gordo would be investing in the same field in Bolivia.
"Narcosur, the PCC cartel, is the fastest-growing criminal organization in the world today," says Attorney Márcio Sérgio Christino, responsible in 2002 for the first complaint against the faction's top, when Marco Willians Herbas Camacho, Marcola , began to ascend to the top of the group.
Profit
After that, a lot changed. Profits from international drug trafficking, estimated at more than R$1.5 billion a year, have grown so much that the faction decided, last August, to suspend the monthly payment of R$950 from its members in freedom. This contribution, called Cebola, was mandatory since the 1990s, and served to maintain expenses such as the PCC TUR, the buses that take family members of inmates from São Paulo to prisons in the west of the state. It was also used to pay for the services of Sintonia dos Gravatas, the faction's legal department, food baskets and other services of the organization's so-called "prison populism".
"This was only possible thanks to international trafficking," says prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya. Threatened with death by the PCC, Gakiya is responsible for Operation Sharks, which identified the faction leaders who took control of the organization in the streets after the settlement of accounts that killed, in 2018, Rogério Jeremias de Simone, Gegê do Mangue. The main one is Valdeci Alves dos Santos, 49 years old.
Colored is responsible for the logistics of trafficking carried out on behalf of the group. CCP men and their associates can buy, transport and sell from the "family", but they also maintain personal businesses. "They get together to transport drugs from another drug dealer in the same truck, plane or container," says Gakiya.
Federal Police members interviewed by the Estadão point out three reasons for the PCC to act with aplomb in Bolivia, despite the fact that Brazil maintains a police collaboration agreement with the country. The first would be the resistance of the Bolivian National Police in acting in partnership with the DEA, the American Drug Enforcement Agency. The second, a certain rivalry with Brazil and, finally, the possibility that drug traffickers can count on the protection of corrupt police and military personnel.
An exemplary case involves the arrest of Gilberto Aparecido dos Santos, Fuminho, Marcola's partner and leader of Narcosur. He remained on the run for 20 years and was only caught in 2020, in Mozambique, through an action that had the help of the DEA. Fuminho had been in Africa since March 2018, opening new trafficking routes to the East and Europe with the help of Nigerians. The aim would be to get rid of the 'Ndrangheta tolls and thus increase their profits.
Before, I lived in Bolivia without being disturbed. He bought a farm and produced genetically modified coca leaves, becoming a partner in Bolivian producers. "Once, a team of Brazilian investigators had him from five meters away, in Bolivia, but they couldn't do anything," says Gakiya.
Bolivia, according to him, occupied the position that in the 1990s was Paraguay. An example of this is that Marcola was arrested in 1999, in São Paulo, when he was returning from Paraguay, where he had bought a farm. It is in Bolivia that the faction maintains its aircraft fleet. "Fuminho had a Citation (a plane manufactured by Cessna) with which he used to travel," says Gakiya.
Today, this fleet is controlled by Colorful and its associates, such as Gordo. Born in Jardim de Piranhas, Rio Grande do Norte,Colorful has been on the run since 2014, when he left the prison in Valparaíso, in the interior of São Paulo, after receiving the benefit of a temporary leave on Father's Day.
He was arrested for the first time in 1993, in Atibaia (SP), accused of bodily harm. Over the next ten years, he would be accused half a dozen times of trafficking, fencing, conspiracy, misrepresentation, and murder, until he was arrested. He spent eleven years in jail, was involved in two rebellions, and rose through the ranks. "He became the main organizer of the CCP's international trafficking," says Gakiya.
In Bolivia, Colored also controls a fleet of trucks to transport drugs. His right arm is Sergio Luis de Freitas, called Mijão. Mijao would own a restaurant in Santa Cruz de La Sierra. Other drug faction traffickers also invest some of the money in Bolivia. In the four cell phones of Lacerda, the Gordo, seized by the 4th Police District of Guarulhos, in 2020, the forensics found photographs of him inspecting planes in Santa Cruz de La Sierra, as well as parties and trips of his family in the country. corporate headquarters and even meetings with alleged drug suppliers in a bar. "The images show an absolutely calm routine of his in Bolivia," says delegate Fernando Santiago, who commanded Operation Soldi Sporchi and is at the State Department of Investigations into Narcotics (Denarc).
Dealers like Gordo use cryptocurrencies in international transactions (read on the side). "They pay up to US$ 20,000 for a 'blind flight' made by aircraft pilots to Brazil," says Lacerda. Gordo is part of the group that grew up in Baixada Santista, with strong ties to the port of Santos dockage. This is where the one appointed by the Federal Police as the biggest drug trafficker linked to the faction comes in: he is André de Oliveira Macedo, André do Rap, whose members include Suaélio Martins Leda, Canam, and Moacir Levi Correia , the Bi da Baixada. Gordo, Leda, Correia and André do Rap were released by court decisions between 2016 and 2020 - two through habeas corpus, one due to covid-19 and the other received the right to respond to the process for trafficking in freedom. "Everyone is operating from Bolivia," says delegate Rodrigo Costa, responsible for the PF nucleus that is investigating the faction in São Paulo.
Bolivia is still identified as the refuge of Marcos Roberto de Almeida, Tuta, another person investigated in Operation Sharks. Tuta was a commercial attaché of the Mozambican consulate in Belo Horizonte and is appointed by prison intelligence as the head of the faction in the streets. The African country was the destination of a shipment of 5 tons of cocaine that the PF surprised on the 5th, at the port of Rio. Hidden in powder soap boxes, the load was the biggest seizure in the history of Rio.
From Africa, the drug would go to Las Palmas, Spain. The passage through Mozambique was a way of circumventing the surveillance of cargo coming from South America in European ports. She also indicates a new route for the cartel - in addition to the ports of Santos and Itajaí (SC), the faction usually uses Fortaleza, Recife and Natal to transport the drugs to Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States. Recently, the faction had a shipment discovered in Buenos Aires and now in Rio.
Car wash, bitcoin and video games company
A gas station in Mauá, Greater São Paulo, is the link between the money laundering of Marco Willians Herbas Camacho, Marcola, leader of the First Command of the Capital (PCC), and another company investigated by the Federal Police in Operation Lava Jet.
The post has among its owners the company DVBR Alfa Participações and is one of 32 in a network through which money would have been laundered from an organization's scheme that generated atypically R$ 245 million, of which R$ 60.6 million in cash , according to a report by the PF in Operation King of Crime. According to delegate Rodrigo Costa, the operation investigated 78 companies that, in four years, moved R$ 32 billion and obtained the blocking of assets valued at R$ 730 million.
This was not the first time that CCP washing schemes have crossed paths with Lava Jato. In 2014, during the PF's Operation Oversea, agents found documents from the companies Labogem and Piroquímica, both related to the Lava Jato, in the safe of the home of a drug dealer Suaélio Martins Leda, 54 years old. Suaélio was imprisoned until July 2020, when he received the right to await the end of the covid-19 pandemic at home. He's on the run.
As of 2018, PCC traffickers and their associates began to use the structure of money changers to operate with cryptocurrencies and, thus, avoid the circulation of paper for faction payments. "You still have physical delivery, in cash, but what am I going to risk if I can give a command on the computer and put $2 million in an account in China, without control? Bitcoin has no control. I can get an exchange in Brazil, but I can open an account through an offshore in France, England, China," says Costa.
In addition to cryptocurrencies, traffickers are using the voice channel of video games, such as Playstation's party, to circumvent police surveillance. What social media had scrambled and subtracted from the police over the past decade - through the provision of encrypted communication - video games expanded. Distrustful of application security, crooks have been testing alternative methods of communication. Each one registers with nicknames and invites the "friend" to be part of their voice channel. It's not even necessary to play. The two targets can "chat" through the console as if they were on a phone. The information is from the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.
Source: https://www.em.com.br/app/noticia/nacional/2021/10/18/interna_nacional,1314813/bolivia-vira-santuario-do-narcosul-o-cartel-da-droga-do-pcc.shtml
https://eldeber.com.bo/pais/bolivia-se-convierte-en-el-santuario-del-narcosur-el-cartel-de-droga-del-pcc_251510