By C4ADS Staff

On August 28, 2025, Brazil launched Operation Carbono Oculto, reportedly the largest police operation targeting organized crime in its history. As part of Operation Carbono Oculto, at least 1,400 law enforcement agents executed 200 search and arrest warrants against 350 individuals and companies across 10 Brazilian states. The ongoing operation seeks to dismantle a network of individuals and companies accused of laundering money for the TCO Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). In São Paulo’s Faria Lima financial district—known as the Brazilian Wall Street—alone, the police served warrants at 42 fintech, real estate, and asset management firms. PCC’s infiltration of financial systems is not restricted to Brazil. Publicly available information exposes how the criminal group has extended its malign presence internationally, including in the United States. Founded in 1993 by eight inmates at the Taubaté Penitentiary in São Paulo, PCC has since expanded to a network of an estimated 40,000 members4 operating across five continents in at least 29 countries. While the PCC’s expansion was predominantly fueled by drug trafficking, which it likely continues to prioritize, it is now a “multinational of crime,” infiltrating multiple sectors in Brazil and worldwide.6When the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned the PCC in December 2021, it described the group as “the most powerful organized crime group in Brazil and among the most powerful in the world.”7 In January 2024, the Brookings Institution called the PCC “a transnational criminal ‘leviathan’,”8 and in February 2025, The Washington Post described it as “South America’s most powerful drug-trafficking gang.”9 Despite its notoriety within law enforcement and policy circles, the PCC—and its access to the U.S. financial system—remain virtually unknown to the U.S. public. By leveraging publicly available corporate, judicial, and police records in the United States and Brazil, C4ADS identified an active Florida company, Bozhanaj Group Corporation, that may be servicing two alleged PCC members: Marinel Bozhanaj and Sebastião Cazula. C4ADS also uncovered alleged PCC money launderer João Gabriel de Mello Yamawaki’s Florida-registered companies from 2017.

Washington DC: C4ADS, 2025. 12p.