Opinion | Brazils Largest Mafia Is Entering Politics. The Government Must Act.

The city of São Paulo, Brazil, is about to elect its next mayor, but the talk of the town is about a party that’s not on the ballot on Sunday: The “party of crime,” or as it’s formally known, the First Capital Command (P.C.C.).Police officials recently claimed that the criminal group moved almost $1.5 billion through fintech companies, using some funds to finance candidates around São Paulo State.And one of the front-runners for São Paulo mayor, the far-right fitness coach and influencer Pablo Marçal, is running under a small political party whose president was caught on tape bragging about his P.C.C.

ties earlier this year.(The party president has denied the audio is of him, but reporters from the newspaper Folha de S.

Paulo say they confirmed its authenticity with six independent sources.)While Mr.Marçal has publicly criticized the P.C.C.’s alleged involvement with the party, the P.C.C.’s push into politics across the nation has been a shock for many Brazilians.

While organized crime has long played a substantial role in local politics in countries such as Colombia and Mexico, this was not as much the case in Brazil until recently — thanks to the extraordinarily fast rise of the P.C.C.The organized crime group began as a São Paulo prison gang in the early 1990s, before taking control of prisons and poor neighborhoods across that state and neighboring ones, and more recently morphing into a transnational drug cartel.Today, it is believed to have members in all of Brazil’s states, with at least 40,000 “baptized” members and 60,000 “affiliates.” It has a presence in 23 other countries as well, and a dominant hold on cocaine exports to Europe.

If you haven’t heard of the P.C.C., that’s not an accident.By keeping a low profile and relying more on corruption than unconstrained violence, the organization has grown with stealth and speed.The organization is converting its cocaine profits into political and licit business power.

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