“The Red Command is in Portugal. This is very bad. It is very bad for Portugal; it is very bad for our image to export here the worst that exists there,” said Antonio José Campos Moreira at the Forum Lisbon, which gathers hundreds of Brazilian personalities in the Portuguese capital.
“We have records and concrete data of members of Brazilian criminal factions already operating here in Europe, particularly Portugal and Italy,” he stated, referring to both the First Capital Command (PCC) and, more recently, also the Red Command.
Campos Moreira emphasized, however, that the presence of the largest criminal faction from Rio de Janeiro “is an embryonic movement, something that can still be contained,” noting that the signing of a protocol on Tuesday with the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Portugal aims precisely to halt this presence and cooperate in combating transnational organized crime through the sharing of information.
The agreement, with an initial duration of five years, also includes the joint organization of seminars, technical meetings, working groups, research projects, sharing of best practices, and exchange between members and collaborators of the two institutions.
The activities will be coordinated by specific units from each Public Prosecutor’s Office, which will be responsible for defining the schedules and operational instruments.
“It is a problem that is common and cannot be tackled solely by Brazil or Portugal,” he noted, adding, “organized crime is no longer a local criminality that operates within a specific territory.”
The PCC emerged three decades ago in the prisons of São Paulo and is present throughout Brazilian territory and much of South America, especially Paraguay and Bolivia.
The Red Command was established in 1979 in the prisons of Rio de Janeiro and is today one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the world.
Between Wednesday and today, Lisbon becomes a kind of second Brazilian capital with the presence of various leading figures from Brazil’s three branches of government, at an event organized by Supreme Federal Court judge Gilmar Mendes titled “The World in Transformation — Law, Democracy, and Sustainability in the Intelligent Era.”
According to the organization, the meeting featured 57 panels, 500 speakers, and an estimated 2,500 participants.
