The United States decision to classify Brazilian criminal factions as terrorist organizations changed the center of the debate. The issue is no longer only drugs, weapons, and territorial control. It is money.
Organized crime does not survive only through guns. It survives through shell companies, money changers, simulated contracts, vulnerable fintechs, negligent brokerages, banks that fail to see, and regulators that arrive too late.
The global scale of the risk is brutal. According to Chainalysis, illicit cryptocurrency addresses received at least US$ 154 billion in 2025, compared with about US$ 59 billion in 2024 and US$ 11 billion in 2020. This is a global figure, not a Brazilian one. CNN Brasil also reported that Brazil received around US$ 318 billion in total on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025. That number does not represent crime in Brazil; it represents the size of the market and, therefore, the size of the risk surface.
Brazil is brutal at the front line and weak with money. In October 2025, a police operation in Rio de Janeiro left 121 people dead, including four police officers. The state shows force when it shoots, but moves slowly when it must trace assets, identify ultimate beneficiaries, freeze funds, and dismantle financial structures.
This contradiction feeds crime in its most efficient form. The state kills at the edge, but lets the cash keep breathing. It brings down armed men, but does not destroy the economic machine that replaces them the next day. Without reaching companies, operators, accounts, real estate, cryptoassets, and influence networks, the operation becomes a statistic: many deaths, little dismantling.
That is why the United States should not look only at the drug route. It should look at the money route. The real risk is illicit capital entering the formal system, circulating as investment, buying protection, and turning into clean power.
Militias must also be part of that radar. They are not merely armed groups. They are structures of extortion, territorial control, economic exploitation, capture of services, and political influence. When crime moves close to the state, the problem stops being only a police matter. It becomes institutional.
Rio de Janeiro is the clearest portrait of this failure.
A federal intervention debate, within constitutional limits, should not be taboo. But intervention without financial investigation is theater. Organized crime is not defeated only with troops. It is defeated by following the money.
This is where the CVM (CVM stands for Comissão de Valores Mobiliários, the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission. It is the Brazilian government agency responsible for regulating and supervising the securities market, including publicly traded companies, investment funds, brokers, and stock market activities) must be confronted firmly. The CVM exists to supervise, regulate, discipline, and develop Brazil's securities market. Therefore, within its own sphere of competence, it cannot operate as a post-mortem authority.
Late warnings, slow proceedings, and sanctions after the damage do not protect victims or intimidate sophisticated fraudsters. The real question is simple: does the CVM arrive in time?
When a pyramid scheme grows for months or years, when an irregular offering raises millions, when operators reorganize before the regulatory response, the problem is not merely bureaucratic. It is institutional failure.
A slow, predictable, or excessively formalistic CVM gives the fraudster time. Time to hide assets. Time to destroy evidence. Time to change companies, accounts, and narratives.
A CVM that arrives too late does not regulate the market; it merely autopsies frauds already consumed.
A suicide attempt in custody, allegations of administrative advocacy used as a channel for surveillance, monitoring of adversaries, and attempts to intimidate the press are not normal facts. They are signs of institutional decay. Even while every allegation must be investigated with due process and the right to defense, the state cannot treat this picture as administrative noise.
One should not claim, without evidence, that every financial pyramid is connected to drug trafficking or terrorism. But it is irresponsible to ignore that large fraudulent structures, with unclear sources of funds and hidden beneficiaries, can serve as an ideal environment for laundering.
Brazil will not confront organized crime only through armed operations. It must confront launderers, money changers, fraudsters, financiers, accomplices, negligent institutions, ineffective regulators, and authorities that pretend not to see.
Terrorism does not finance itself.
Someone launders.
Someone structures.
Someone regulates badly.
Someone closes their eyes.
And when the state arrives too late, crime has already done what it needed to do: turned dirty money into clean power.
Sources:
1. CNN Brasil / Chainalysis - crypto crime and Brazil on-chain market data
cnnbrasil.com.br/nacional/brasil/criminosos-movimentaram-quase-r-1-trilhao-com-cript...
2. Chainalysis - 2026 Crypto Crime Report introduction
chainalysis.com/blog/2026-crypto-crime-report-introduction/
3. U.S. State Department - terrorist designations press releases
state.gov/terrorist-designations-press-releases
4. Reuters - Rio de Janeiro police raid, 121 deaths
reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-deadliest-police-raid-failed-capture-or-kill-gang...
5. Gov.br / CVM - institutional mandate of the Brazilian Securities Commission
gov.br/cvm/pt-br/acesso-a-informacao-cvm/institucional/sobre-a-cvm
6. Reuters - Banco Master probe, informal central bank consultancy, suicide attempt, and threats
reuters.com/world/americas/banco-master-owner-vorcaro-detained-by-brazil-police-loca...
7. Associated Press - Supreme Court order and investigation involving threats, money laundering, and system intrusion
apnews.com/article/13c9a88612145e7e5fc759c019af2ac2
Note: the US$ 154 billion and US$ 104 billion figures are global. The US$ 318 billion figure refers to total on-chain value received by Brazil, not Brazilian illicit volume.
