Primeiro Comando da Capital
The Primeiro Comando da Capital, also referred to as 15.3.3 ) or simply as Partido, is a Brazilian organized crime syndicate. According to a 2023 The Economist report, the PCC is Latin America's biggest drug gang, with a membership of 40,000 lifetime members plus 60,000 "contractors". Its name refers to the São Paulo state capital, the city of São Paulo.
The group is based in the state of São Paulo and is active throughout Brazil, South America, West Africa and Europe. An international expansion fueled by the cocaine trade made the PCC establish a profitable partnership with the Italian 'Ndrangheta and, as of 2023, run over 50% of Brazil's drug exports to Europe. Through the cocaine trade routes to Europe, the PCC also established itself as a central player in the West African cocaine trade, with its members being able to exert control over neighbourhoods in cities such as Lagos and Abuja. According to a leaked Portuguese intelligence report, the group also has around 1,000 associates in Lisbon.
Historically, the PCC has been responsible for several criminal activities such as murders, prison riots, drug trafficking, bank and highway robberies, protection rackets, pimping, kidnappings-for-ransom, money laundering, bribery, loan sharking, and obstruction of justice, with an expansion focused on drug trafficking since the 2010s. As of 2023, the PCC is currently transitioning into a global mafia, being able to influence politics and penetrate the legal economy. According to São Paulo state authorities, the group has had a yearly revenue of at least since 2020. In August 2025, the Brazilian Federal Revenue revealed that the organization controlled at least in property investments.
The PCC is often mentioned to have a different doctrine to other Brazilian cartels, with a business model that favors the quiet expansion of markets over violent and expensive turf wars and confrontations with the state that would draw unwanted attention. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime noted that the PCC's ability to negotiate with rivals rather than expelling them has permitted the group to make use of preestablished criminal networks and preexisting logistics know-how along the cocaine value chain, encouraging peaceful cooperation between different groups and producing greater economic efficiency by reducing operating costs. However, the group has been responsible for waves of extreme violence, including targeted political violence and terrorism, upon having their interests threatened.
History and operations
Founding
The PCC was founded on August 31, 1993, by eight prisoners at Taubaté Penitentiary, called "Piranhão", in the state of São Paulo. At the time, this was considered the safest jail in the state.The group initially got together during a football game. The prisoners had been transferred from the city of São Paulo to the Piranhão as punishment for bad behavior, and they decided to name their team the Capital Command—a name which would stick, as the game was followed by the brutal killing and decapitation of both the deputy director and a prisoner with special privileges, with the head of the latter being put on a stake.
The initial members were Misael "Misa" Aparecido da Silva, Wander Eduardo "Cara Gorda" Ferreira, Antônio Carlos Roberto da Paixão, Isaías "Esquisito" Moreira do Nascimento, Ademar "Dafé" dos Santos, Antônio "Bicho Feio" Carlos dos Santos, César "Césinha" Augusto Roris da Silva and José "Geleião" Márcio Felício.
PCC, which was also formerly referred to as the "Party of Crime", and as "15.3.3", was founded with a clear agenda, to "fight the oppression inside the São Paulo penitentiary system" and to "avenge the death of 111 prisoners": the victims of the previous year's Carandiru massacre, when the São Paulo State Military Police stormed the now-defunct Carandiru Penitentiary and massacred prisoners in the 9th cell block.
The group had the slogan "Peace, Justice and Freedom" and made use of the Chinese taijitu as their emblem, claiming it represented a "way to balance good and evil with wisdom". In February 2001, Idemir "Sombra" Carlos Ambrósio became the most prominent leader of the organization when he coordinated, by cell phone, simultaneous rebellions in 29 São Paulo state prisons, in which 16 prisoners were killed. "Sombra", also referred to as "father", was beaten to death in the Piranhão five months later by five PCC members in an internal struggle for the general command of the group. The PCC was led by "Geleião" and "Cesinha", who were responsible for an alliance with another criminal organization, Rio de Janeiro's Red Command. At the time, the gang adopted the CV's far-left beliefs and began advocating for revolution and the destruction of Brazil's capitalist system.
Geleião and Cesinha, from the Bangu Penitentiary where they were held, went on to coordinate violent attacks against public buildings. Considered radicals by another moderate current of the PCC, they used terrorism to intimidate authorities of the prison system and were withdrawn from leadership in November 2002, when the leadership was taken over by the current leader of the organization, Marcos "Marcola" Willians Herbas Camacho. Marcola would eventually order the deaths of Geleião and Cesinha for having testified to the police and for creating the Terceiro Comando da Capital.
"Trade union of crime"
The PCC first appeared as an entity capable of maintaining order in the lawless Brazilian prison system, providing protection to prisoners, imposing rules and punishing crimes such as rapes, murders and extortions, as well as seeking a peaceful resolution to conflicts between inmates. In return, members would be charged a monthly fee to pay for lawyers, provide aid to families in need and to pay for items for arrested members.In the late 1990s, the São Paulo State Government sought to separate the PCC leadership in order to dismantle the organization, sending leaders to different penitentiaries across the countries. The action backfired however, as the leaders' "trade union discourse" resonated with inmates across the country, expanding the group in the process. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the PCC became notorious for high-profile bank robberies and prison rebellions, including the largest bank robbery in the country's history, where armed gunmen carried out a heist on the central Banco Banespa branch in São Paulo, escaping with R$32.5 million.
Under the leadership of Marcola, also known as "Playboy", currently serving a 232-year sentence, the PCC took part in the March 2003 murder of Judge Antônio José Machado Dias, who ran the Penitentiary Readaptation Center from Presidente Bernardes, São Paulo, then Brazil's most strict supermax-style prison. The PCC also announced its objective to use prison uprisings as a way to demoralize the government and to destroy the CRP.
In May 2006, the PCC carried out its [|biggest attacks], in retaliation against an attempt to transfer the PCC leadership to high-security prisons. The attacks lasted for 4 days and caused 564 deaths. According to the São Paulo State prosecutor Márcio Christino, PCC founders Cesinha and Geleião were more extreme in their methods, intending to use car bombs to blow up the São Paulo Stock Exchange building. Marcola disagreed, believing the PCC had more to gain by keeping a low profile. Such belief was strengthened after Marcola was imprisoned in the same facility as the Chilean guerilla fighter Mauricio Hernández Norambuena in 2006, who taught Marcola not to carry out pointless attacks to the detriment of the civilian population, as those would only facilitate state repression.
Expansion into domestic drug trafficking
From the early 2000s, the PCC started consolidating its power outside of the prison system, expanding its influence as providers of order and conflict solvers into low-income neighbourhoods throughout São Paulo, known as favelas. During its early expansion phase, the PCC sold drugs at cost price to lesser drug dealers, helping expand their reach, and eventually taking over their drug dens when collecting debts. This allowed the gang to form a cartel that dominated the city of São Paulo. Eventually, every drug den in SP came to be under the PCC's control, being either owned or "licensed" by the PCC, in a consignment model where an independent dealer exclusively buys drugs supplied by the group.One of the main differences between the PCC and other Brazilian criminal groups is that territorial control is enforced without the open brandishing of firearms that characterizes groups such as the CV in Rio de Janeiro. Individuals that fail to comply with the group's "discipline" are judged by the "crime courts", with sentences that can range from beatings to summary executions. Rather than expanding by territorial conquest alone, the PCC is able to develop its illicit activities more efficiently by focusing on the regulation and control of markets combined with a monopoly on violence and discipline.
The PCC's expansion and dominion over the state of São Paulo is seen by researchers as one of the reasons behind the sharp decrease in the state's homicide rate since the 2000s. The criminal group's reasoning is that murders attract police attention and, consequently, cause problems in drug sales.
In 2014, the Brazilian Federal Police launched Operation Oversea, which first identified the PCC's cocaine shipments to Europe, before the group had consolidated drug trade routes or perfected money laundering schemes.
Control over Paraguayan drug trafficking routes and focus on export market
A turning point for the PCC was set in 2014 when it pivoted away from domestic sales and turned towards the more lucrative export market. The group cemented its influence over the Port of Santos, the biggest port in South America, and evolved into a multinational organization with presence and influence across five continents through alliances with other groups such as the 'Ndrangheta as well as Mexican, Colombian, Russian and African criminal networks. GI-TOC fieldwork highlighted that the value chain often starts with stolen or second-hand vehicles in Brazil exchanged for drugs in countries such as Bolivia and Paraguay.From 2016, the group cemented its influence over the Paraguayan border, an important trade route for cocaine supplied from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia and for arms trafficked from Paraguay and the United States. It involved the murder of Jorge Rafaat, a Brazilian drug lord of Lebanese ancestry. Rafaat's armored Hummer truck was ambushed in Pedro Juan Caballero by more than 100 mercenaries, including a Toyota SW4 featuring a concealed Browning.50 MG which fired more than 400 rounds into the drug lord's truck. The 10-minute shootout left Rafaat dead and 8 more injured. About 40 of his associates were subsequently murdered.
This allowed for a major expansion in the following years, with the Brazilian Public Prosecutor's Office estimating that the PCC had reached over 30,000 'baptized' members in 2018, with at least 2 million more allied to the group.
In 2016, the breakdown of a 20-year truce between the PCC and the Red Command led to a massive uptick in violence across Brazil, with the PCC embarking on an aggressive expansion campaign by absorbing less organized gangs and financing local groups to operate as proxies against the CV across the country, such as the B13 gang in Acre and the CV's rivals in Rio de Janeiro.
In early 2017, a series of gruesome prison riots made headlines worldwide as the PCC fought for control of the North Region against the Família do Norte, erstwhile allies with the Red Command. On January 1, dozens of PCC prisoners were massacred at the Anísio Jobim Penitentiary Complex in Manaus after a prison riot, with the PCC retaliating in prison riots in Boa Vista and in Natal in the same week. Dismemberments, beheadings and prisoners being burned alive were commonplace during all three prison riots.
In 2020, Ryan C. Berg of the Center for Strategic International Studies reported on the importance of the Solimões River drug trade route, calling it a "Latin American Silk Road for drug trafficking" connecting Peru and Colombia to the Atlantic Ocean. The region was violently contested by the PCC, CV and FDN, as well as their local proxies, in a three-way conflict. As a result of fierce domestic competition, the PCC's overseas operations became key to its expansion, turning control over the Solimões river into a strategic objective.
In 2021, the "King of the Frontier" Fahd Jamil Georges, who ruled over drug trafficking and the jogo do bicho in the Ponta Porã region for over five decades, turned himself in to authorities seeking protection, claiming that the PCC was after him.
Over the next months, a wave of contract killings fueled fears that Paraguay might become a narcostate. In May 2022, the Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci was shot dead while on honeymoon with his wife in Baru, a tourist island off Cartagena, Colombia. Initial investigations raised the possibility of the PCC being behind the hit, until Paraguayan and Uruguayan cartels allied to the PCC were implicated in the murder.
A year earlier, the mayor of Pedro Juan Caballero, José Carlos Acevedo, had also been murdered when leaving the city hall.