Global Courant
The figures exceed those of all other drug laundering cases opened in Argentina: in the period May 2022 to September 2023 alone, $185 million was laundered via cryptocurrencies.
That’s what San Isidro federal judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado experienced while investigating a gang of Brazilians linked to the powerful Comando Vermelho (CV), one of Brazil’s largest criminal groups.
The CV, born in the prisons of Rio de Janeiro, is in conflict with the First Capital Command (PCC), born in the prisons of São Paulo. Both groups are committed to the same goal: drug trafficking, arms trafficking, extortion and homicide. They move a lot of money and their main problem is using it. This is where whitewashing comes into play.
The file examined by Federal Prosecutor Fernando Domínguez and Diego Velasco and Laura Roteta – heads of the Anti-Money Laundering Prosecutor’s Office (Procelac) – was brought to light on September 6th.
That day, the group’s leader, Marcelo Alves De Sousa, managed to escape the police. He ran from his office in Fray Justo Santa Maria de Oro until 2100.
The man went up in smoke with his wife and Argentine-born daughter. However, three of his partners who had eloped with him fell almost immediately. And this Monday, Judge Arroyo Salgado indicted them for the crime of “aggravated money laundering.”
Marcelo Cleyton Alves De Sousa and his wife, the refugee couple accused of laundering drug money for the Red Command, lived in Nordelta.
Not only that. Wilson Alexandre Cardoso de Olivera, his brother Thiago Cardoso De Oliveira and Eliamar Das Dores de Melo were hit by a record embargo: one billion 200 million pesos each. The unpublished figure is related to the cryptocurrency money that experts say flowed through the band’s virtual wallets. The vast majority were transacted through an Alves de Sousa wallet accessed on September 6th.
When the federal police entered his house in the La Isla neighborhood in Nordelta (Tigre), they were able to open his safe and found two notebooks there. One said “work” and another said “personal.” One of them contained the “starting phrase” of his virtual wallet (a 12-word code).
When entering the key, the experts found $45,000 in cryptocurrencies. However, closer analysis revealed that $185 million flowed through these and other wallets discovered in the operation. This is a market that is not regulated in Argentina.
Marcelo Cleyton Alves De Sousa and his wife, the refugee couple accused of laundering drug money for the Red Command, lived in Nordelta.
Such a flow of money – never before seen in a criminal case in our country – was moved through cryptocurrency transfers, but mules were also used to cross the border with suitcases full of banknotes. Two of them were arrested last week after arriving at the Fray Justo Santa Maria de Oro building with $150,000 in cash.
