FROM UNDERWORLD TO WHITE COLLAR: BRAZIL´S GANGSTERS HAVE BEEN GETTING INTO POLITICS / THE ECONOMIST

From underworld to white collar

Brazil’s gangsters have been getting into politics

They want friendly officials to help them launder money

At last, justice came. 

On October 31st two former policemen were sentenced to a combined 138 years in prison for murdering Marielle Franco, a councillor they killed in Rio de Janeiro in 2018. 

A gay black woman from a favela, Ms Franco was an icon of Brazil’s left. 

She had made it her mission to expose links between local politicians and militias in Rio. 

The assassination shocked a nation inured to violence. 

She may have been killed for denouncing attempts by militia members to seize public land illegally and build on it.

Founded by former policemen, Rio’s militias gained prominence in the 1990s by hunting down drug traffickers, winning the support of terrified residents and forging links with local politicians. 

Yet today they extract a security tax in areas they control and charge residents for access to gas, internet, transport services and electricity. 

More recently, they have started trafficking the drugs themselves. 

Brazil’s criminal groups are walking the militias’ path in reverse. 

Gangs are increasingly funding politicians, paying off local prosecutors and bureaucrats, and laundering their assets through the legal economy.

Take São Paulo, the country’s financial heartland. 

Unlike Rio, where the homicide rate runs at about 21 per 100,000, mainly because of turf wars between gangs and militias, São Paulo has long been relatively peaceful. 

That is because it is controlled by a single gang, the First Capital Command (PCC). 

Founded by inmates as a mutual-defence organisation after a prison massacre in 1992, the PCC expanded as Brazil’s incarceration rate ballooned in the 2000s. 

Today it is South America’s largest gang, counting 40,000 members and 60,000 affiliates. 

It is increasingly involved in politics and white-collar crime. 

“Brazil is experiencing what Italy experienced in the 1990s,” says Lincoln Gakiya, the lead prosecutor against the PCC in São Paulo, as his 24-hour bodyguards stand nearby.

In April the city government took over two private bus operators, which carry more than 16m passengers a month, after an investigation led by Mr Gakiya found that the companies were being used to launder money for the PCC. 

The gang is also suspected of controlling petrol stations across the country and of getting involved in public health-care services, property, illegal gold-mining and rubbish collection. 

In 2004, when Mr Gakiya began investigating, he reckoned it was making less than $2m a year. 

By 2020, it was thought to be netting $1bn annually. 

Most of that comes from outside Brazil, as the gang’s drug-trafficking operations have expanded around the world.

On August 6th, in the run-up to local elections, São Paulo’s police arrested 20 people and carried out 60 search-and-seizure operations as part of an investigation into the PCC’s illegal campaign financing. 

Attacks against election officials were 29% higher between July and September than during the same period before local elections in 2022. 

Gangs are thought to have been behind the surge. 

“The PCC doesn’t want to run a political party or overthrow the state,” says Mr Gakiya. 

“They want to obtain benefits by financing politicians.” 

This may include swaying public procurement bids for transport services or obtaining tax concessions for PCC businesses.

All of this has frightened President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

Brazilians rank crime and drug trafficking as their top concern, along with corruption. 

More than a third expect a rise in gang-related murders in the next six months, according to a recent poll. 

On October 31st Lula, as the president is known, presented regional governors with a plan for tackling the problem. 

“Soon organised crime will be taking part in public tenders, appointing judges, appointing prosecutors, appointing politicians and candidates,” he warned.

The government says it will integrate intelligence systems between investigative agencies to cross-refer data on crimes. 

It will grant the federal highway police powers to inspect railways and rivers, and will change the constitution to allocate money permanently to a national-security fund.

Some governors have pushed back, suggesting that the federal government is taking away states’ rights to run security policy. 

Yet the lack of national integration is just what may be letting gangs infiltrate politics at lower levels. 

“What we are seeing is more penetration of local legislatures, mayoralties and local public-procurement offices,” says Robert Muggah of the Igarapé Institute, a think-tank in Rio. 

If Brazil wants to kick out the gangsters, it must first unite the governors.