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51 statements · 1 politicians · September 2, 2025
Statements by Sérgio Moro. 51 transcribed statements, with topic and stance on the ones the analysis classified. Topics: Organized Crime, National Security, Justice Policy, Prison system.
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Transcript
51 statementsFull transcript of the video. Statements the analysis classified carry topic and stance.
Good afternoon everyone, good afternoon to my fellow Senators, and to the Acting President.
- Neutral
About: ensure cooperation between states and the Union in combating organized crime
Last week there was an operation, a large operation by the Federal Police, together with Gaeco of São Paulo, together with the São Paulo State Police, three operations jointly, also involving the police of the State of Paraná, which gave an idea of the scale of the problem we need to face.
- Neutral
About: reduce homicides and combat organized crime
The greatest threat today, in Latin America, to democracies and to the well-being of the population is represented by organized crime, those criminal organizations, like the PCC, like the Comando Vermelho and others that have been growing, not only in recent periods, but for quite some time.
- Neutral
About: combat organized crime
And the level of infiltration of these organizations into the market, into the economic domain, is frightening.
- For
About: ensure cooperation between states and the Union in combating organized crime
We need to have, and there is no problem in saying this here, we need to have more operations like last week's, in which the police forces, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Judiciary itself act jointly, a coordinated action to confront these challenges.
There is no institution, even if illicit or criminal in nature, that is invincible.
For a long time, the Cosa Nostra, which is one of the main mafia organizations of Italy, operated under a cloak of impunity.
There were practically no investigations or arrests in significant cases that affected the crime bosses.
But in the 1980s, thanks to the work of dedicated magistrates like Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the Cosa Nostra lost its aura of invincibility.
The famous so-called Maxi Processo, in which the trial lasted more than a year but concluded around the mid-1980s, resulted in more than three hundred mafiosi, including major mafia bosses, being arrested, convicted and suffering the consequences.
Similarly, the five mafia families that controlled crime in New York were notorious.
But, from the 1980s on, the police forces began to form task forces, primarily the FBI, but not only the FBI, and, over time, brought successful prosecutions and charges against the main crime bosses.
What works against organized crime?
- For
About: identify and convict leaders of organized crime
First, it is necessary to identify and seek the criminal conviction of the bosses.
- For
About: identify and convict leaders of organized crime
It is no use staying at the base of the pyramid, it is no use focusing on the intermediaries; one must, indeed, reach the crime bosses.
- For
About: use special investigative methods and international cooperation against organized crime
And one only reaches the heads of organized crime through special investigative methods.
- For
About: use special investigative methods and international cooperation against organized crime
In the past wiretapping was highly successful. Today, it is practically already a method that is very difficult to succeed with, given these encryption mechanisms, but infiltrated operations, cooperation agreements (plea bargains), tax investigations, bank account tracing and international legal cooperation are essential to secure successful prosecutions against the bosses.
- For
About: confine criminal leaders in solitary confinement in federal prisons
Once convicted and imprisoned, they must be isolated.
- Neutral
About: confine criminal leaders in solitary confinement in federal prisons
And for that, Brazil already has an effective instrument, which is the federal maximum-security prison system.
The federal maximum-security prisons have stood the acid test.
There have been, historically, unfortunately, two escapes that occurred during this Government, but these are exceptions in an otherwise successful record, in which those taken to federal prisons are isolated, kept in individual cells for most of the time - 22 hours - with only two hours outside the cell for recreation.
- For
About: adopt closed prison regime without benefits (visits and temporary releases) for members of criminal organizations
Is it a harsh prison regime? Yes, but it is a prison regime necessary for those bosses of organized crime.
- For
About: confine criminal leaders in solitary confinement in federal prisons
When I assumed the Ministry of Justice in 2019, one of our first acts was to transfer the PCC leadership out of São Paulo, because they were there in state prisons, waiting for an opportunity to escape and still controlling the criminal underworld.
- For
About: confine criminal leaders in solitary confinement in federal prisons
They were all transferred - more than two dozen, in a true wartime operation - to federal prisons, and, when they set foot in the federal prisons, we also changed the visitation regime to prevent them from having contact with the outside world that was not monitored by federal penitentiary police officers.
- For
About: adopt closed prison regime without benefits (visits and temporary releases) for members of criminal organizations
That is: contact only in a visiting booth, with glass separating them, speaking by telephone and with the conversation being controlled by the federal penitentiary officer.
- For
About: adopt closed prison regime without benefits (visits and temporary releases) for members of criminal organizations
Harsh regime? Yes, but let us remember that one of those crime bosses, held in a federal penitentiary, managed, had the ability...
- Neutral
About: adopt closed prison regime without benefits (visits and temporary releases) for members of criminal organizations
Before we imposed this more drastic regime, he had the capacity to order the murder of three federal penitentiary officers or of people connected to the federal penitentiaries, as a kind of retaliation for what he had been enduring.
- For
About: expand use of asset confiscation for assets linked to criminal organizations
In addition to identifying and arresting these leaders, we need confiscation, we need forfeiture of the assets of these criminal organizations, and we already have, in the legislation, several instruments available to carry this out, such as precautionary patrimonial measures, like asset freezes, asset seizures, asset attachments...
- For
About: apply extended confiscation to the assets of organized crime members
But I highlight here, in particular: in 2019 we approved, in the Anti-Drug Law, the so-called extended confiscation, which is an institute brought from comparative law that allows...
- Neutral
About: expand use of asset confiscation for assets linked to criminal organizations
Once it is identified that a confiscated individual has ties to organized crime, that he acted and committed serious drug trafficking crimes or crimes related - in the Anti-Drug Law - to organized crime, this legislation allows that all of his assets that are not compatible with his proven lawful income be subject to confiscation.
In other words: for those individuals who chose to live in the world of crime to sustain a criminal lifestyle, there are now instruments capable of a generalized confiscation of their assets that are not demonstrably of lawful origin.
It is an institute of comparative law: the United Kingdom, Portugal, all European countries adopt similar rules.
This was also introduced into the Penal Code, in art. 91, because of the anti-crime bill, in which we did not manage to approve everything we wanted, but there was approval of important points, among them the extended confiscation in the Penal Code, as a useful instrument to broaden the confiscation of the assets of these criminal organizations.
- For
About: expand use of asset confiscation for assets linked to criminal organizations
What is missing, yes, is for magistrates, for the Justice system, to make broader use of this institute, because it is no use for it to exist potentially in the law and not be applied in practice.
And what the episode from last week illustrates...
- For
About: create and expand integrated investigative task forces between police, the MPF and intelligence agencies
We need cooperation. It is inadmissible that police do not talk to police.
- For
About: preserve compartmentalization of operational information before joint operations
Of course we need compartmentalization of information to preserve the secrecy of operations before they are carried out.
- For
About: create and expand integrated investigative task forces between police, the MPF and intelligence agencies
But this integrated work among police forces, among revenue services, between them and the Public Prosecutor's Office, among all of them and the Coaf, which is our intelligence body for preventing money laundering...
(A bell rings.) ...this communication is necessary.
- For
About: create and expand integrated investigative task forces between police, the MPF and intelligence agencies
If we do not organize ourselves against organized crime, if our institutions do not operate together in confronting organized crime, we will not be successful.
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