Split in the PCC raises fears of instability in public security

The leadership that Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, known as Marcola, exercises in the PCC (First Command of the Capital) is being challenged by some members of the criminal faction’s leadership. The depth of the split in the organization is not yet clear, but it is already leading to murders of criminals loyal to different leaders of the group outside of prisons. At least two cases have been registered and security authorities across the country are on alert for a possible escalation of violence between criminals inside and outside prisons.

Police officers who are part of the intelligence service of the National Penitentiary Department, subordinate to the Ministry of Justice, and sources from the Judiciary confirmed to the report the dispute for power within the faction.

According to them, it all started after the leak of an audio recording in which Marcola mocked one of his main “generals” – Roberto Soriano, “Tiriça”, number two in the faction’s hierarchy. The conversation would have been recorded with judicial authorization, but without Marcola’s knowledge, and passed on widely within the top echelon of the criminal organization.

Soriano would have accused Marcola of treason, for violating the group’s rules, and tried to take power for himself. He would have even devised a plan to try to kill his now rival. The plan only failed because the “street”, as the faction members who are free are called, did not agree with the change of command.

The criminal was one of Marcola’s main partners. Responsible for some of the faction’s most violent actions, he allegedly gave the order to execute three criminal police officers between 2016 and 2017.

Alex Belarmino de Souza was executed with 23 shots, in September 2016, in Catanduvas, Paraná. The following year, in April, it was the turn of Henri Charle Gama e Silva, murdered in Mossoró, in Rio Grande do Norte. The third death was that of Melissa de Almeida Araújo, a psychologist at the Catanduvas maximum security prison who lived in Cascavel (PR). She was executed in May 2017, in front of her newborn daughter.

Another version of the split is that Soriano and at least three other members of the PCC leadership accused Marcola of being a “snitch”, decided to expel him from the faction and order his death. In response, Marcola accused the four of treason and ordered them to be killed.

Marcola, Soriano and other members of the PCC leadership are imprisoned in the Federal Penitentiary of Brasília, but, in theory, they would not be able to maintain contact with each other because of the isolation regime in force in the prison unit. PCC leaders were sent to federal prisons in 2019.

Prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya, who is working on the case, told TV Bandeirantes on the 19th that the policy of isolating leaders had as one of its objectives cutting the chain of command and eventually causing an internal division in the faction. According to him, in addition to Marcola and Soriano, at least three other criminals were involved in the power struggle, which began to result in violence on the streets.

One of the murdered criminals is a man identified by the police as one of the leaders of drug trafficking in Guarujá, on the coast of São Paulo. He was executed in a snack bar, in the Vicente Carvalho neighborhood, on March 17. According to witnesses, a man on a motorcycle was the gunman. It is not clear who he was linked to at the top of the faction.

The other crime occurred on February 24, in Greater São Paulo. The victim of the attack would be one of the heads of a PCC cell responsible for drug trafficking, the faction’s biggest source of income. He was killed while walking along the sidewalk, accompanied by his wife and stepdaughter. Both were injured in the attack. The murdered criminal would be one of the men loyal to Marcola.

Federal agents and members of the Judiciary are now trying to monitor developments in the power struggle to try to contain a possible wave of violence.

Analysts disagree on the possibility of “internal war” in the PCC

For the specialist in Criminal Sciences and director of the Public Security Commission of the OAB-DF, Marco Costa, this split at the top of the PCC could be one of the reasons why the governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas (PL), has extended the Operation “Verão” in Baixada Santista took so long, which has already left at least 47 suspects dead. All with links to organized crime, according to the São Paulo Security Secretariat.

“It is possible, yes, that these clashes will take over other regions of the country, since there are members of the PCC in all Brazilian states. The main victim of this war, certainly, is the well-to-do population, which is the majority in the most needy people in the country, being used as a shield for the actions of bandits”, highlighted Costa.

The public prosecutor of the Public Ministry of São Paulo Márcio Sergio Christino, author of the book “Blood Ties: The Secret History of the CCP” (Ed. Matrix, 2017), believes that it is too early to talk about an internal war in the faction. According to him, there is still no sign of the expansion of conflicts, since the isolation of leaders in federal prisons has made it difficult for the group to articulate. “It may happen [a guerra interna no PCC], but, so far, these actions have been very punctual. Nor was any major movement detected within the prison system that would indicate this intensification,” explained Christino, who was one of the first members of the Public Ministry to investigate the faction.

“The PCC is essentially trafficking. Repression is confused with the fight against trafficking. Repressing the PCC means combating drug trafficking, and Brazil needs to decide what it really intends in this regard”, added the prosecutor.

Considered by authorities to be the largest criminal faction active in the country, the PCC has approximately 40,000 members spread across almost all Brazilian states. According to Interpol, the group is already the eighth largest criminal organization in the world, with average annual revenue of around US$1.2 billion.

Judge Ivana David, from the São Paulo Court of Justice, has followed the group’s growth since its creation. Today, most of the cases related to the 22 leaders of the faction who are serving sentences in federal prisons pass through his desk. It confirms the existence of a power struggle at the top, which has been going on for more than a decade and was marked by executions on both sides of the war.

But, according to the jurist, this fissure would not be enough, for example, to divide the organization and create a dissident faction. “I doubt that the losers of this dispute will think about creating a new faction. The PCC would not allow it. Today, the strength of the organization is very great. Anyone who tried to defy them would be sentenced to death. São Paulo is different from the rest of the country, where we sometimes find three or four factions dividing territories. Like in Rio de Janeiro, for example, where militias joined forces with drug traffickers. One group owns the day, the other owns the night. Here in São Paulo this does not exist”, stated the judge.

The report contacted the Ministry of Justice, but did not receive a response until the article was closed.

May 2006: war outside prison walls

Ivana David made a point of recalling the wave of attacks coordinated by the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in May 2006, shortly after the São Paulo government’s decision to transfer 763 inmates linked to the PCC to Penitentiary 2 of Presidente Venceslau, a maximum security unit. . Sintonia Fina, a group that brings together the main leaders of the faction, ordered attacks against civilian and public security targets, which soon spread across the country. In less than ten days, the “salve” had already left a toll of 564 deaths (505 civilians and 59 public agents).

“At that time, the faction did not have the size, strength and weapons it has today. They had half the members they currently have. A new wave of attacks would be a terrible thing. Much worse than what we saw in 2006”, warned the judge.

“On the other hand, a war against the State would be bad for the criminal organization’s business. They know that. An attack on the people would be an attack on the State, which would be forced to respond. And the PCC wouldn’t want that”, said Ivana David.