São Paulo prosecutor targets PCC financing network and “crime tribunal” operations in Brazil

São Paulo’s public prosecutor’s office launched an operation on Tuesday (21) to serve 18 search-and-seizure warrants and 18 preventive arrest warrants against a clandestine financial organization allegedly acting as the logistical arm of organized crime. For high-risk payment teams, the useful detail is simple: this was not just cash-in, cash-out laundering, but a service layer that gave criminal money the appearance of legitimacy through front companies and informal banking.

1. The operation was led by the Ministério Público de São Paulo and its Grupo de Atuação Especial de Combate ao Crime Organizado (Gaeco). Investigators say the network served everyone from ordinary criminals to leaders of Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), functioning as a kind of clandestine financial back office.
2. According to prosecutors, the operators acted as “banking” service providers for illicit funds. They received cash of criminal origin, routed value through accounts of shell legal entities, and paid commissions to doleiros to launder the money without any legitimate commercial justification.
3. Investigators identified large transactions carried out by Alexandre Salles Brito, known as Buiu. They also say PCC leader Leonardo Monteiro Moja, known as Léo do Moja or Léo do Moinho, became one of the main clients of the network.
4. Moja is accused of heading drug trafficking in Favela do Moinho, in central São Paulo. Prosecutors say he used the operators to buy assets without putting them in his own name and to justify cash payments, with the purchases made in someone else’s name in exchange for cash.
5. The prosecutor’s office said the network also got involved in private disputes, including a fight over luxury properties in Riviera de São Lourenço, on the coast of São Paulo. The investigation says Moja’s group intervened in favor of businessman Cléber Azevedo dos Santos, strengthening the service relationship between the businessman and the PCC’s financial arm.

One reason the case moved quickly: one participant in the so-called “tribunal do crime” — the faction’s internal trials — recorded audio files of up to one hour in which members laid out prison histories, internal links, and rules of conduct. To cut off the money flow, prosecutors asked for, and the court ordered, a freeze of up to R$ 10 million in assets and accounts linked to the operators and shell companies in the laundering structure.