A gangland hit at São Paulo’s international airport has exposed just how deeply Brazil’s most powerful crime syndicate, the PCC, is embedded in the country’s economy and public sector. From real estate and finance to tourism and even religion, the group’s dirty money has permeated the country.
One always thinks of airports as being extremely secure areas. However, this was not the case on the 8th of November 2024 in South America’s largest airport, São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport! Antônio Vinicius Gritzbach, a real estate broker turned money launderer, was gunned down leaving the arrival’s terminal in an audacious assassination that was perpetrated by several police officers with close links to Brazil’s most powerful organised crime group, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (Capital’s First Command ‘PCC’). Gritzbach, who became a multi-millionaire due to his role as a money launderer for the PCC, was murdered after he became a cooperating witness for the Brazilian state in its investigations into the organized crime group’s finances and its corrupting of public officials.
The PCC, which began as a prison gang in the mid-1990s, has become incredibly powerful and has extended its operations well beyond its home territory of São Paulo into all of Brazil’s 26 states and abroad to neighbouring Paraguay, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, and further afield to Portugal, the United Kingdom, Spain, the USA, and elsewhere. The group’s primary source of income is drugs trafficking, but they are also involved in kidnapping for ransom, bank robberies, and sex trafficking.
Where there is ill-gained money there is usually money laundering. The PCC has become an ever-more sophisticated participant in Brazil’s business sector. The group has invested in an assortment of industries, including construction, petrol distribution, currency exchange shops, car dealerships, and is even running evangelical churches. SET Advisory has also recently identified significant investments made by senior members of the PCC into tourist resorts in Brazil’s Northeast.
The PCC has also used the porous tri-border area between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay – also a favourite destination for money laundering by Lebanon’s Hezbollah – to both move its drugs and also invest its ill-gotten gains. Ciudad del Este on the Paraguayan side of the border – long a smuggler’s paradise – has become an ever more important node for the PCC’s money laundering operations.
The PCC’s ‘dirty money’ has also allegedly made its way into some of the largest financial services providers on Avenida Faria Lima, Brazil’s equivalent of Wall Street. On 28 August 2025, as part of its investigations into the PCC, the Brazilian Federal Police launched Operação Carbono Oculto (Operation Hidden Carbon), which included raids on the offices of fund managers, stock brokerages, and payment processors. Amongst those who had their offices searched was REAG Investimentos SA, a fund manager that is listed on Brazil’s stock exchange, the B3.
And of course, as would be expected the PCC have also become heavily invested in cryptocurrencies!
The PCC’s ever-increasing participation in Brazilian and international commerce should be a great cause of concern for businesses. The PCC has become incredibly sophisticated in how it operates, including, as outlined above, reportedly becoming involved in high finance. This is especially relevant from a regulatory point of view, as there is a strong possibility that Trump’s White House might designate the PCC as a terrorist organization, as it has done with Mexican cartels and, more recently, the leaders of the Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua. Dealing with a PCC front company could result in both large fines for and the criminal prosecution of executives by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Therefore, those doing business in Brazil, and also with entities abroad that have ties to the country, should always factor in this risk and undertake adequate due diligence into their counter parties so as to diminish the possibility of dealing with the PCC or one of its fronts.
This analysis is a contribution made by Edward Semple, Managing Director and Founder of SET Advisory.