The PCC (First Command of the Capital) has a size comparable to that of Italian organized criminal groups and the efficiency of a multinational corporation, according to a publication on Monday (20) in The Wall Street Journal.
The report highlights how the advance of the PCC has been associated with wars over trafficking routes, violence in areas of the Amazon and disputes in European ports, showing that its expansion has a direct impact on security in several countries.
“From arms trafficking in Boston to pirate attacks in the Amazon, the PCC represents one of the biggest risks to international efforts to contain organized crime”, classifies the North American newspaper.
“A Brazilian gang founded in the country’s violent prisons is quickly becoming one of the largest criminal organizations in the world, reshaping the global flow of cocaine from South America to Europe’s busiest ports and infiltrating the United States.”
The WSJ highlights that, “with around 40,000 members behind bars and on the streets”, the PCC has become the largest criminal group in the Americas, operating in almost 30 countries on all continents, constituting a truly transnational organization.
“With the size of Italian organized criminal groups and the efficiency of a multinational corporation, the PCC helped drive record cocaine seizures in Europe and triggered violent turf wars in the heart of the main ports of Belgium and the Netherlands,” emphasizes the WSJ.
The report comes amid discussions about the possibility of .
According to the Wall Street Journal, prosecutors and police in Brazil are asking that . The publication also states that these prosecutors see the PCC as representing organized crime at its “most extreme level”.
“For a long time off Washington’s radar, the Primeiro Comando da Capital, known by its Portuguese acronym PCC, began as a group of disgruntled inmates fighting for soap and toilet paper in the 1990s,” the report reports.
“Unlike Mexican drug traffickers, heavily armed Colombian militias, or the flamboyant bosses of Rio de Janeiro’s Comando Vermelho, PCC members maintain a low profile and professional profile, seeking fortune rather than fame—and avoiding the types of gratuitous violence that attract police and TV news crews. New recruits submit to a strict internal code of conduct, and their oath ceremonies are sometimes held via video conference,” he points out.
The article points out that the PCC exercises power in remote areas of Brazil, creating a type of “parallel governance”, recruiting vulnerable young people and governing local life where the State is weak.
Furthermore, it emphasizes how even though the group’s historical leader, Marcola, is in prison, the PCC continued to grow, which suggests that the criminal organization today functions less like a gang dependent on a single boss and more like a stable and adaptable structure.
According to the text, the faction also uses a wide money laundering network, including apparently legal businesses and other shell businesses, such as churches, gas stations, real estate and fintechsto hide criminal resources.
In the second half of 2025, the mega-operation Carbono Oculto exposed financial institutions – including fintechs and investment funds – from the heart of Avenida Faria Lima – one of the main hubs of the sector in the city of São Paulo – which were .
The report’s focus points to, above all, the way “in which a Brazilian prison gang became a global power in cocaine trafficking.”
The WSJ indicates that the PCC’s international trafficking network would be connecting South American producers to routes and exit ports that supply Europe and other markets around the world.
The North American publication’s diagnosis is that the PCC has become a global drug trafficking power, with the capacity to adapt logistics, infiltrate local economies and challenge traditional policies to combat organized crime.
