A gang born in Brazil's brutal prison system is no longer just a domestic security threat. The Primeiro Comando da Capital, or PCC, has evolved into a sprawling transnational criminal organization that prosecutors, U.S. officials, and recent international reporting say is reshaping cocaine routes from South America to Europe and making troubling inroads into the United States.
The group began in São Paulo's prison system in the 1990s and has since grown into what U.S. Treasury described in 2024 as "the most notorious organized crime group in Brazil and among the largest in Latin America." Treasury said the PCC has an "expanding global presence," while a recent Wall Street Journal investigation described it as operating in nearly 30 countries and counting roughly 40,000 members and affiliates behind bars and on the streets.
Its business model has moved far beyond prison extortion and neighborhood drug sales. According to Insight Crime, the PCC's biggest expansion came when it pushed to secure cocaine at wholesale prices from Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, then built routes that feed Europe's voracious market through maritime shipping lanes and container ports. That expansion lines up with European Union data showing that cocaine availability remains extraordinarily high. The European Union Drugs Agency reported a record 419 tons of cocaine seized by EU member states in 2023, the seventh straight annual record, with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain accounting for most of it.
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That helps explain why ports such as Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg have become so important. Europol said this year that those ports have traditionally been the primary gateways for large-scale maritime cocaine trafficking into Europe, even as traffickers increasingly diversify routes and methods when security tightens. In practical terms, that means criminal groups are not only moving drugs. They are also probing logistics systems, exploiting commercial shipping, and shifting operations as soon as law enforcement closes one door.
The global environment has only made that easier. The United Nations said in its 2025 World Drug Report that global cocaine production hit another all-time high in 2023, reaching more than 3,708 tons, up about 34 percent from a year earlier. As supply grows, so does the opportunity for groups with the discipline, networks, and laundering capacity to move product across continents. That is where the PCC stands out. The U.S. Treasury said the organization's operations reach the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Brazilian prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya, who has tracked the PCC for years, told the Journal, "The PCC has become a truly transnational group." It is a simple description for a much more complicated threat. The PCC has been described not just as violent, but as highly organized, disciplined, and business-minded, able to mix old-fashioned brutality with modern money laundering and cross-border logistics.
The United States is paying closer attention. In March 2025, federal prosecutors in Massachusetts announced charges against 18 Brazilian nationals in a firearms trafficking crackdown. The Justice Department said some of the firearms were tied to gang-related activities involving the PCC and that investigators had seized about 110 firearms, fentanyl, and ammunition. Reuters later reported that U.S. officials told Brazilian counterparts the FBI had identified PCC and Comando Vermelho cells in 12 U.S. states, including Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Connecticut, and Tennessee.
That growing U.S. concern has also opened a political fault line between Washington and Brasília. Reuters reported in May 2025 that Brazil rejected a U.S. request to classify the PCC and Comando Vermelho as terrorist organizations. Mario Sarrubo, Brazil's national secretary of public security, told Reuters: "We don't have terrorist organizations here, we have criminal organizations that have infiltrated society." The distinction is legal, but it is also strategic. Washington sees another tool for sanctions and disruption. Brazil sees a powerful mafia-like criminal threat, but not one that fits its terrorism laws.
Still, on the core point, there is little disagreement. The PCC is no longer just Brazil's problem. It is now embedded in the global cocaine economy, tied to Europe's port crisis, tracked by U.S. prosecutors and important enough to sit at the center of international sanctions and diplomatic friction. What started as a prison survival pact has become a multinational criminal machine, one that moves with the speed of global trade and the ruthlessness of a cartel.
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