Brazil’s Federal Police seized BRL 9.5 billion in cash and assets from organized crime in 2025 – up from BRL 6.1 billion seized in the previous year, the corporation’s director-general, Andrei Rodrigues, said Monday (Dec. 15). The figures correspond to the period from January to November of each year.

According to Rodrigues, these are “funds that were effectively seized from organized crime,” having been confiscated in various forms, “in cash, real estate, boats, aircraft, cryptocurrency, or gold.”

The amounts were also found in the accounts of those under investigation, even though it is common for the amounts seized in these cases to be less than the amount frozen by the courts, Rodrigues said.

The director met with journalists on Monday at the Federal Police headquarters in Brasília. During the meeting, he defended the measures taken to de-capitalize organized crime.

“It’s not the poor black people in the favelas. We need to confront those who finance, who have resources, who run organized crime and lead organized structures, and who have rarely set foot in a favela,” he said. 

According to Rodrigues’ assessment, in 2025, to date, the Federal Police has recorded 3,310 approved operations, up from 3,133 last year, with 2,413 arrest warrants served, also up from 2,184 in 2024. In his view, the numbers demonstrate “a more efficient result of the investigations.”

The results for 2025 from the Integrated Force for Combating Organized Crime (FICCO) were also presented, which recorded 215 operations, 978 arrests, and 1,551 searches and seizures carried out. The de-capitalized value totaled BRL 163.31 million.

The four justices of the first panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously voted to uphold the preventive detention of former President Jair Bolsonaro. He has been held in a Federal Police facility in Brasília since Saturday (Nov. 22).

Bolsonaro was arrested on Saturday morning after attempting to tamper with his electronic ankle bracelet with a soldering iron. At a custody hearing, the former president confessed to the act and claimed “paranoia” caused by medication.

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In the decision ordering preventive detention, Justice Moraes also cited a vigil called by Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president’s son, to be held by supporters in front of the condominium where Bolsonaro was under house arrest, in the Jardim Botânico neighborhood of Brasília.

“The information confirms the convicted man’s intention to break his electronic ankle bracelet to ensure his escape, facilitated by the confusion caused by the demonstration called by his son,” the justice wrote. He said he ordered preventive detention to “ensure the application of criminal law.”

As expected, Justice Moraes reproduced his own decision in Monday’s vote. Justice Flávio Dino, in turn, attached a written vote in which he stated that the vigil to be held in a densely populated area represented an “unbearable threat to public order,” putting residents of the region at risk.

Justice Dino also cited the recent flight of congressman Alexandre Ramagem to the US, as well as other Bolsonaro supporters attempting to flee.

“These flights show deep disloyalty to national institutions, creating a deplorable criminal ecosystem,” he declared.

When asked to comment, Bolsonaro’s defense team claimed “mental confusion” caused by the interaction of drugs that affect the central nervous system. The day before his arrest, the former president’s defense team had requested the Supreme Court to allow Bolsonaro to serve his sentence under house arrest on humanitarian grounds. The request was rejected.

Justice Cristiano Zanin simply concurred in full, without attaching a written opinion.

Coup d’état

In September, Bolsonaro was sentenced by the first panel of the Supreme Court to 27 years and three months in prison, initially in closed custody. By a vote of four to one, he was found guilty of leading an armed criminal organization in a bid to stage a coup d’état, to remain in power after his electoral defeat in 2022.

The first panel has so far rejected the initial appeals filed by the defense team representing the former president and six other defendants convicted in the same criminal case, which targeted Nucleus 1, the main group of defendants in the coup plot case.

Ramagem is part of the same group and was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison.

This Monday (24) marks the deadline for the defense to file new motions for clarification – appeals that aim to answer questions or fill gaps in the conviction ruling, but which, in theory, would not change the outcome of the trial.

The defense could still appeal for infringements, in which lawyers can plead for the reversal of the conviction based on the votes for acquittal. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, however, states that this type of appeal is only applicable if there is more than one dissenting vote – which is not the case with Bolsonaro.

In similar cases, Moraes ordered the sentence to be served immediately after the rejection of the first motions for clarification was confirmed, on the grounds that any additional appeal would be “merely dilatory.”