Brazil's Justice and Public Security Ministry opened a National Anti-Gang Office in Rio de Janeiro on July 3, creating a permanent federal presence in one of the country's main battlegrounds against organized crime.
The office is meant to improve coordination among the federal government, Rio state authorities and municipalities across the state. The announcement is based on single-source reporting from Poder360, which republished material originally produced by Agência Brasil.
Why Rio Matters
Justice Minister Wellington César Lima e Silva said Rio de Janeiro "synthesizes" Brazil's public security challenges. According to the minister, the state saw some of the key changes in modern organized crime, including armed territorial control, market capture, money laundering and infiltration into formal economic activity.
Rio has long been associated with heavily armed criminal factions that operate in poor urban communities, prisons and illicit markets. The federal government's new office is part of the broader Brazil Against Organized Crime Program, which also includes similar units in São Paulo and Foz do Iguaçu, a city in Paraná state on Brazil's border with Paraguay and Argentina.
Following the Money
The program also includes regional offices of the Council for Financial Activities Control (Coaf) in São Paulo and Rio. Coaf is Brazil's financial intelligence unit, responsible for monitoring suspicious transactions and helping authorities track money laundering.
National Public Security Secretary Chico Lucas said financial pressure is central to the strategy because criminal groups use profit to fund violent operations. He said authorities are working with Brazil's telecommunications regulator, Anatel, to identify phone and internet operators allegedly serving organized crime, as well as formal businesses that may have been captured by criminal groups.
Lucas said the government wants to map and remove points of infiltration while regulating markets to prevent similar activity from spreading. The statement indicates a strategy that goes beyond police raids and treats organized crime as an economic network.
Prisons and Operations
The Rio office is also expected to support state police forces with logistics during operations and help other Brazilian states confront criminal organizations that began in Rio. Lucas said the federal government should share the cost and operational burden of fighting groups whose influence now reaches beyond the state.
Federal authorities also plan to reinforce prison security in Rio. André Garcia, the national secretary for penal policies, said the government will donate equipment and train state prison officers in procedures used in Brazil's federal maximum-security prisons.
Garcia said 138 prisons across Brazil were selected for the program, including Rio's main penitentiary units. He said those prisons hold almost 80% of the country's criminal leaders, and that the goal is to monitor and isolate them so they cannot coordinate crimes from inside prison.
The government also plans at least two regional prison operations and one major national operation every month. The source did not specify the timetable for the first operations in Rio or the amount of federal funding assigned to the new office.