Brazil Ramps Up PCC Crackdown: New Arrest Order, R$290 Million Freeze, Police Sent to Jury

Overview

• Court ordered the temporary arrest of an eighth suspect in the assassination of ex–São Paulo police chief Ruy Ferraz Fontes, with four already detained and four still sought as DHPP advances searches, witness interviews and forensic reports.
• Federal and Military Police executed 22 preventive arrest warrants and 40 searches across five states and froze about R$290 million in a Ficco-led operation tracing back to a 2021 cocaine seizure in Barcarena bound for Rotterdam.
• Among the targets of the trafficking and laundering probe was Alexandre Constantino Furtado, vice-president of Liga-SP and head of the Império de Casa Verde samba school, identified by investigators as linked to the PCC.
• Three military police officers — Fernando Genauro da Silva, Denis Antônio Martins and Ruan Silva Rodrigues — were sent to a jury trial over the execution of PCC delator Vinicius Gritzbach at Guarulhos Airport, with preventive detention maintained.
• Pernambuco’s Operação Venatores detained 16 suspects, including a Military Police soldier, on allegations of homicide, drug trafficking, passive corruption and money laundering, as civil police executed searches and blocked bank accounts.