US newspaper highlights that the Brazilian faction operates in almost 30 countries and that the group has advanced in North American territory
The Wall Street Journal, from the USA, published on Monday (20) a report that points out the PCC, born in São Paulo prisons, as a faction of a “efficiency of a multinational corporation”. The article also compared the Brazilian group to italian mafia and classified it as the “global power on the cocaine route”.
According to the newspaper, the organization that began in the 1990s with inmates demanding basic items, such as soap and toilet paper, now numbers around 40 thousand members. The group operates in almost 30 countriesspread across all continentswith the exception of Antarctica.
“Currently, the group has around 40,000 members behind bars and on the streets, in addition to a vast network of affiliates — which makes it, according to some estimates, the largest criminal group in the Americas, operating in almost 30 countries on all continents, except Antarctica”, states the article.
The North American publication highlights that, unlike Mexican drug traffickers, Colombian militias or CV violence in Rio de Janeiro, PCC members maintain a low profile e business-oriented. According to the report, they seek “fortune, not fame”, avoiding gratuitous actions that attract the attention of the police and the press.
According to the article, anyone who joins the PCC goes through a “rigorous internal code of conduct, and their oath ceremonies are sometimes held via videoconference.”
The text mentions that the Brazilian organization forged strategic alliances with ‘Ndrangheta – Italian mafia -, the Yakuza – from Japan – and gangs from Albania and Serbia to send tons of drugs to European ports such as Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg.
Threat to the USA
Although Europe is the most lucrative market for cocaine exported by the PCC, the faction is already considered a problem for the United States.
According to The Wall Street Journal, São Paulo authorities have already identified in their organizational charts a “North American division” of the PCC. The US Treasury Department sanctioned the group in 2021 and, in 2024, froze assets of financial operators linked to the faction. Today, American authorities track CCP-affiliated individuals in states such as Florida, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Tennessee. In Massachusetts, Brazilians linked to the group have already been accused of trafficking heavy weapons and fentanyl.
According to the portal, the advance and complexity of the group led Brazilian police and prosecutors to ask the US government to officially classify the PCC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
