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In September 2020, the Australian Border Force intercepted 552kg of cocaine concealed in 2,000 boxes of frozen banana pulp that had arrived at the port of Sydney on a ship from Brazil.
Two years later, a diver was found floating dead next to 52kg of cocaine near the port of Newcastle, in New South Wales, Australia. Police later discovered that he was a Brazilian national who had been attempting to retrieve drugs from a cargo ship’s hull.
Both cases were eventually traced back to a crime syndicate founded more than 30 years ago in a São Paulo prison, which has become one of Brazil’s most powerful criminal organisations.
The First Capital Command (PCC) now has a growing crime portfolio, with interests across Latin America including cocaine markets and illegal goldmines, and it controls a key drug-trafficking market to Europe.
But it has also “significantly expanded its operations into Australia”, according to a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute thinktank.
And where once it confined itself to supplying drugs to local traffickers, “the PCC’s management of its Australian operations now appears to be markedly more hands-on”, the report found.
“I wanted to understand how Brazilian criminal organisations are reaching so far,” said the report’s author, Lt Col Rodrigo Duton, a senior Brazilian police officer. “If organised crime knows no borders, we, as law enforcement, must follow the same path.”
Australia’s illicit drug market, Duton said, presents a “compelling opportunity for transnational organised crime groups due to its high profitability and relative market stability”.
Duton identifies the 2020 banana pulp seizure as the country’s first recorded instance of PCC activity. “But that doesn’t mean it hadn’t started earlier,” he said.
The PCC emerged in 1993 as a prison gang in São Paulo – formed in response to a massacre in which police killed 111 inmates at the Carandiru penitentiary. In the following years, it expanded its operations through retail drug sales, eventually reaching the rest of the country.
Over time, it secured access to cocaine producers in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and began exporting. “In the past 15 years, the PCC’s primary source of profit has shifted to cocaine exports,” said Bruno Paes Manso, a journalist and researcher at the University of São Paulo’s Centre for the Study of Violence.
Although Europe remains the PCC’s primary consumer market, it has rapidly expanded into Africa and Asia due to its “very intelligent way of operating”, said Paes Manso.
“Of course they use violence – and they’re just as cowardly as other criminal groups when there is conflict – but they also have a clear understanding that it’s a huge and highly profitable trade of billions of dollars … So they do not aim to control markets or territories beyond Brazil; they seek business partnerships,” he said.
And that is what happened in Australia, where the PCC was attracted by an “emerging market”, said Duton, whose report notes that a kilogram of cocaine valued at £2,400 ($3,000) in Colombia can sell for £8,000 in Brazil, £37,000 to £50,000 in Europe, and £127,000 to £159,000 ($160,000 to $200,000) in Australia and New Zealand.
The further the drugs are from the producing countries, the harder it is for them to reach their destination, prompting the PCC to diversify its methods of shipment. In addition to shipping containers – preferably with frozen goods, which makes inspections more difficult – they also use divers who attach waterproof packages to the hulls of ships and later retrieve them at the destination.
The diver found dead in 2022 was later identified as Bruno Borges Martins, who, before the expedition, worked performing underwater repairs on vessels in Santos, the Brazilian city home to the largest port in Latin America – through which the PCC exports a significant portion of its drugs.
Police are still seeking another Brazilian, Jhoni Fernandes Da Silva, identified as Martins’ accomplice in the operation. James Blake Blee, a superyacht tourism operator from Queensland, was charged with organising and facilitating their illegal entry into the country. He pleaded guilty to importing the drugs and was convicted in November by an Australian court.
Duton believes the PCC’s presence in Australia is still in its early stages but he cautioned that it has significant potential for growth. He believes the group’s expansion can only be contained through strengthened cooperation between Australian and Brazilian police, enhanced border security and a focus on money-laundering operations.
Paes Manso argued that the only solution was drug regulation. “Simply banning drugs and imprisoning criminals is not working, and the state never wins because people keep consuming drugs,” he said.
