The government is moving to create what amounts to a revenue police in Brasília, a specialized office within the Federal Revenue Service tasked with tracking how organized crime embeds itself in the legal economy. Finance Minister Fernando Haddad framed the new unit as a way to turn a two-year, ad-hoc effort into a permanent state tool.
“We want to institutionalize [the unit] to prevent setbacks… When you create a state body for a specific purpose, it becomes harder to undo,” he told reporters, adding that the office will focus on crimes against the financial system and on organized crime, in coordination with the Federal Prosecution Office, Federal Police and state task forces.
Haddad also urged the House to approve a bill that would tighten the screws on “chronic tax debtors,” companies that use tax delinquency as a business strategy. Officials have come to discover that many such companies are tied to organized crime, and the legislation passed in the Senate shortly after a massive operation into tax fraud schemes linked to the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Command of the Capital, or PCC), Brazil’s most powerful criminal organization.
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