The PCC plot against the life of Sergio Moro

Federal Police agents on Wednesday launched an operation against a specialized cell of a major criminal organization that was planning attacks against high-ranking Brazilian public officials, including Senator Sergio Moro, the former star judge of Operation Car Wash fame.

Official, on-the-record information about the operation is scarce. The Federal Police said in a press release that about 120 officers executed 24 search-and-seizure warrants and 11 arrest orders in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Rondônia, São Paulo, and Paraná. The statement did not name the criminal organization or its targets, and federal authorities did not hold a press conference about the operation.

In interviews with the press, São Paulo prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya provided more information. The operation targeted Sintonia Restrita, a cell within the First Capital Command (PCC). The PCC is a criminal syndicate described by the U.S. government as “the most powerful organized crime group in Brazil and among the most powerful in the world.” Sintonia Restrita is a kind of “special operations” unit within the PCC, composed of criminals who specialize in intelligence activities.

The PCC dates back to the early 1990s. The organization, which later became Brazil’s largest criminal empire, was founded by eight inmates inside a prison in Taubaté, a city near São Paulo. Their goal was to denounce what they saw as the “oppression” of the prison system.

They also wanted to avenge the prisoners killed in the Carandiru massacre, the biggest in Brazil’s prison system. Following a riot on October 2, 1992, 111 inmates were slaughtered by police agents in São Paulo’s Carandiru prison in the space of half an hour. The police have always claimed that the killings were in self-defense, although the prisoners didn’t have firearms, and many bodies were found with bullet wounds in the back of the head, in classic execution style. 

From São Paulo, the PCC spread to all Brazilian states and other countries, growing in numbers mainly from within the prison system. The degrading conditions within Brazilian penitentiaries (a former justice minister said in 2012 that he would “rather die than go to jail in Brazil”) are a great asset for the...