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After the Sao Paulo government isolated 22 CCP leaders in federal prisons, the faction lost strength in Sao Paulo: cocaine seizures doubled in 2019, during which time police seized $ 481 million in criminal group assets.
Since the early 1990s, when the CCP was established in Sao Paulo, the leading criminal faction inside and outside prisons across the country has never been so weakened as it is now. Not that it was dismantled, but the organization that controls the largest chunk of drug trafficking – and commands the waves of violence provoked by drug traffickers and inmates – suffered a severe blow in 2019, when 22 of its main incarcerated leaders were transferred to three prisons. federal security agencies, where they remain virtually incommunicado. With the isolation begun in February last year, after an agreement between Governor João Doria and Justice Minister Sergio Moro, the bosses can no longer communicate with each other, nor can they transmit their orders to their loose henchmen in the big cities. Thereby, the faction is being asphyxiated by the São Paulo police, which accounts for the record seizure of cocaine (35.5 tons last year, representing a 102.8% increase over 2018) and the confiscation of assets used for trafficking as hundreds of vehicles, some boats, 15 planes and two helicopters. Everything was valued at almost half a billion reais.
“The CCP is not inarticulate, but the strategy developed by the police created barriers that became insurmountable for faction leaders” Ruy Ferraz, director general of the São Paulo Civil Police
The identification and transfer operation of faction leaders, led by Ruy Ferraz, director-general of the São Paulo Civil Police, was surgical and critical to the disarticulation of the faction’s chain of command. The main leaders of the CCP, led by Marco Willians Herbas Camacho, known as Marcola, and Julio Cesar Guedes de Moraes, Carambola, considered the number two of the organization, were transferred to the federal prison of Brasilia, where they will be at least for the next few years. three years by iron and fire. They cannot communicate with each other, receive no intimate visits, and contacts with lawyers are monitored and only possible through the parliaments (prisoners communicate under the protection of thick glass and the use of intercoms). The possibility of cell phones or drugs being introduced into these prisons is virtually nil. Without communication, these bosses can not coordinate the same actions that operated from within the Paulista chains. This was not the only channel. While in state prisons, inmates ‘mates, family members, and, most importantly, the prisoners’ lawyers transmitted orders to criminals outside prisons.
“We interrupted their communication, injuring their plans to control drug trafficking, which is what sustains the organization,” Ferraz explained in an interview with ISTOÉ.
However, the policeman makes a point of saying that the CCP is not “completely inarticulate.” He points out that the strategy developed by the São Paulo police has created barriers that, for the time being, are insurmountable. “It’s true that the faction has other leaders who occupy non-maximum-security prisons, commanding thousands of followers who work outside prisons, but the immobilization of the current bosses was critical for the organization to suffer the setback in 2019,” said Ferraz.
Weakened faction
Last year, the São Paulo Civil Police organized approximately 100 operations against the faction, leading to the arrest of thousands of its members and the closing of cocaine refining laboratories. A good example was the case reported last October in the city of Nazaré Paulista, where police found 2.2 tons of the drug ready for use and arrested 18 people linked to the gang. In these operations, in addition to drugs and vehicles, the police seized about 200 assault rifles and submachine guns. The State Security Secretariat states that, due to the greater fragility of the faction, the main crimes committed by the CCP suffered considerable setbacks. In 2019, police reported a 78.3% drop in ATM attacks, a 64.7% reduction in bank robberies and an 18.3% decrease in state cargo theft (6,558 in 2019,
The CCP’s bosses are incommunicado within federal jails and cannot pass their orders on the big-city henchmen
More than seizing large amounts of drugs, making the faction’s main source of income unfeasible, what the São Paulo police want most is to undermine the group financially. Thus, only last year the São Paulo police withdrew R $ 481 million from faction boxes. More than that, the police shut down one of the important money-laundering taps that the CCP had been using to expand its economic power: remittances made by cable money-changers of the dollars obtained from selling drugs abroad. In these currency movements, the high values obtained with the drug were converted into dollars, returning to the country, after properly heated, in operations made by ghost and orange companies. One of these bureaux de change, TOV.
Police now want to find an efficient way to stop the collection of money among the thousands of CCP affiliates. The funds are used to support the structure and are charged to those in prison as well as those who are free. According to the São Paulo State Security Secretariat, the CCP collects from $ 600 to $ 800 per month from each Party member – as they call themselves. Those who do not have the money to contribute are required to attack ATMs, rob banks or roadside charges. “These robberies are not directly coordinated by the CCP. They are made on the initiative of their affiliates, who use these actions to pay back what they owe. The CCP is only interested in drug trafficking. The rest is the initiative of the members, ”says Ferraz.
Those who are serving time in jail are obliged to support the Party in another way. They are forced to buy raffles, especially from automobiles. Each raffle number costs about $ 20. Those who do not have money for the raffle in jail force relatives to commit crimes to obtain the money required by the criminal organization. “Now our strategy is to prevent the collection of these boxes from continuing,” said the director general of the Civil Police. If the São Paulo government does not rush to claim that it has annihilated the CCP, as it did not, the authorities are celebrating significant advances against organized crime. Last year was the lowest rate of intentional homicides in decades, with 6.5 fatalities per group of 100,000 inhabitants.
The national average is 30 murders for each group of 100,000. For the families of the dead there is no breath, but it is undeniable that life, especially in the most violent suburbs, has gotten a little less worse.
Police focus on seizing large amounts of drug to derail faction’s main source of income: cocaine trafficking
Source: Istoe
