Brazil mounted its largest-ever organised-crime crackdown on Thursday, raiding companies in ten states and freezing up to 1.2 billion reais (about US$220 million) in assets linked to a money-laundering and fuel-fraud scheme run by the Primeiro Comando da Capital drug gang. Codenamed Operação Carbono Oculto, the action involved some 1,400 federal police and tax officials executing roughly 350 search-and-seizure warrants, from sugar-cane fields to São Paulo’s Faria Lima financial district. Investigators say the PCC moved at least 52 billion reais (US$9.6 billion) between 2020 and 2024 by importing methanol, adulterating gasoline and diesel, and funnelling sales from more than 1,000 service stations through a web of shell companies. The criminal network allegedly evaded 8.7 billion reais in taxes and used the proceeds to acquire port assets, four ethanol plants, a fleet of 1,600 tanker trucks and over 100 properties. Prosecutors traced 46 billion reais of suspicious flows through fintech platforms and identified 40 closed-end investment funds holding about 30 billion reais in assets. Search warrants targeted asset-manager Reag Investimentos, Banco Genial and payments firms BK Bank and Bankrow; Reag’s shares fell more than 13 percent after the raids. Military police cordoned off office towers on Faria Lima as investigators seized documents and digital records. Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said the operation reached “the upper floors of organised crime” and announced that fintechs would henceforth be regulated as full financial institutions, obliged to meet the same disclosure and compliance standards as banks. President Lula called the raids the state’s “greatest response yet” to criminal infiltration of the formal economy and pledged further measures to recover public revenues and protect consumers.