Police operation targeting Brazil’s largest criminal organization uncovers Panama Papers link

Leaked Panama Papers documents reveal a new connection between an accused money launderer and a sprawling financial network that police claim is linked to one of Brazil’s largest criminal organizations.

As part of an ongoing operation against the suspect network, authorities have seized and frozen millions of dollars of what they say are illicit profits from the country’s largest criminal organization, Primero Comando da Capital, known as PCC, according to media reports.

São Paulo police allege proceeds of drug trafficking were moved through a syndicate of companies to mask their illicit origin. A 446-page report on the police investigation obtained by Agência Pública, a Brazilian investigative news outlet and an ICIJ partner, named one of those companies as Farlow Development SA, registered in the British Virgin Islands by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. In 2016, the now-shuttered law firm became synonymous with the shady world of offshore finance following ICIJ’s Panama Papers exposé, based on a cache of 11.5 million leaked Mossack Fonseca records. More than 214,000 offshore entities appeared in the leak.

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The report obtained by Agência Pública stated that police found information on Farlow Development via ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks database during their investigation. An ICIJ review of Panama Papers documents found Farlow Development was created in early 2012 a few months before Dalton Baptista Neman, a Brazilian national became its largest shareholder. His romantic partner Cristiane Cheruti and his son Caio Alonso Neman are also named as shareholders. All three were arrested in 2021 on charges of using a family-run company called Banco Neman to launder money for the PCC and were later released. An online search led police to the Offshore Leaks database, which named Baptista Neman, Cheruti and Caio Alonso Neman as Banco Neman’s founders.

São Paulo authorities said they had frozen 150 million reais (some $26 million) linked to the criminal group in August, while courts blocked 41 bank accounts, according to media reports. After executing 31 search and seizure warrants, police seized an additional $14 million in late September in an operation targeting drug trafficking in an area colloquially known as “Cracolandia” near the border with Uruguay, several media outlets reported. Police have dubbed the actions and ongoing investigation “Operation Downtown.”

Alice Maciel, a reporter at Agência Pública, spoke to Baptista Neman on Aug. 26. In the interview, he confirmed he had opened Farlow Development in the BVI, but said that he did not use it to move money. “We never had any money from outside. We opened the company, but not a single real was ever deposited into the account,” Baptista Neman said.

A Panama Papers document showed that Dalton Baptista Neman’s mother, then-82-year-old Irene Baptista Neman, was granted power of attorney over Farlow Development shortly after her son became the company’s largest shareholder. The police report said that five weeks later, the woman’s name was used to incorporate a new financial company in Brazil which moved more than 50 million reais (around $21.7 million at the time) in just six months.