Mozambique: “Fuminho” controlled the local and South African drug market – Carta

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Mozambique: “Fuminho” controlled the local and South African drug market – Carta

10:50 CAT | 14 Apr 2020

Photo: Social Media

A reliable ‘Carta’ source revealed yesterday that Gilberto Aparecido dos Santos, known as “Fuminho”, controlled the local drug trade and managed much of the supply to South Africa, which he visited from time to time. He had been around in Mozambique for years, after being harassed out of Bolivia by the Brazilian Federal Police.

A local police source told ‘Carta’ that he set up camp in Mozambique, one of the destinations for his container shipments of cocaine, where he already had a list of acquaintances, almost ten years ago.

Yesterday, ‘Carta’ wrote that Fuminho arrived in March this year. March 30th, to be precise, was the date he checked in at Montebello, the Sommerschield hotel resort of, with his departure scheduled for April 29, eventually to a house on the outskirts of Maputo.

“Fuminho” is a notorious Brazilian drug trafficker on the run since January 12, 1999, when he escaped the São Paulo Carandiru Penitentiary. He was born in São Paulo on August 24, 1970, and has always inhabited the world of crime. After the Carandiru prison break, he hid in Bolivia, where he continued his criminal activity, along with his partner Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho – ‘Marcola’ – leader of the criminal organisation First Command of the Capital (PCC). Marcola was captured, and Fuminho vanished into his criminal web.

Sought relentlessly throughout Mercosur, Fuminho did not think twice: his safest destination would be southern Africa, and particularly, Mozambique, with its worldwide reputation as a safe corridor for drug trafficking. Much of the drug supply of Europe and South Africa arrives from the Americas through Mozambique.

Fuminho already had local contacts here. A source told ‘Carta’ that he lived between Maputo and South Africa. Here, he shares business and intimate life with his partner, Maria Caroline Marques Gonzaga who, a few months ago, narrowly escaped almost certain arrest by Interpol in Cape Town. In other words, Fuminho had one foot in the idyllic South African Atlantic city … and another in Mozambique.

And then came Covid 19

Fuminhomaputopoliciafederalbr — *Photo: Diulgação Policia Federal, Brazil*

While fleeing hot pursuit in South Africa, Ramaphosa’s lockdown in the context of the Covid-19 containment catches him in Mozambique, where he conducts his drug distribution and money laundering business for local people and companies, but no longer able to return to the RSA. His to-and-froing between Kampfumo and Randland was done in a clandestine manner and he chose not to endanger himself, staying here.

The Montebello apartment was a temporary location. His local partners, including a Nigerian ‘import-export’ company, had promised him shelter somewhere less visible. The company, whose name we are withholding, is pointed out by a police source as being responsible for shipping all of Fuminho’s drugs from Maputo to neighbouring countries.

Part of the drugs that Fuminho received from Brazil was transported by human carriers – drug mules – some of whom were detained at Mavalane Airport in Maputo, with others serving as a distraction so as to allow larger quantities to enter the country. Some of these detainees, mostly women, are in prison in Mozambique, but they enjoy the privileges that can only be obtained through bribes. (Fuminho is rightly said to have recruited a network of prison officials on his sinister payroll.)

Yesterday, after ‘Carta’ published the news first hand, it was soon confirmed by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice. The Brazilian media, broadly speaking, wrongly reported that the arrest had been made by the Brazilian Federal Police, when in fact, the Mozambican Criminal Investigation Police [SERNIC] and its agents took the reins of the operation. No foreign authority has the power to issue arrest warrants in Mozambique.

Fuminhomaputopfedbr — *Photo: Social Media*

Brazil’s Minister of Justice, Sérgio Moro, was more cautious, saying that the detention was the result of a joint operation between the Mozambican Police, the US DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and the Brazilian Federal Police. Mozambican authorities have yet to comment. A communication could emerge today, clarifying many of the minutiae of Fuminho’s arrival in the country and his life in Mozambique. Sérgio Moro has stated that he expects Fuminho to be extradited to Brazil very soon.

By Omardine Omar and Marcelo Mosse

Prisão de grande liderança do PCC, apontado como o principal fornecedor de cocaína para o Brasil. Congratulações à Polícia Federal e agradecimento à Polícia de Moçambique,à DEA e ao Departamento de Justiça dos EUA.Forte combate ao crime organizado no Governo do PR @jairbolsonaro https://t.co/XMvrVIyjHv

— Sergio Moro (@SF_Moro) April 13, 2020