Reported by Isabella Cota

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.

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. 

Read full report: https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/police-operation-targeting-brazils-largest-criminal-organization-uncovers-panama-papers-link/