Brazil has the dubious honour of being second to Colombia in the global cocaine trafficking market, with hundreds of kilos of the white powder smuggled into Australia via risk-taking divers or hidden on ships.
The top crime cartel based in Sao Paulo, Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), has significantly expanded its reach into Australia with methamphetamines and other synthetic drugs, a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found.
"Traditionally, Australia has grappled with transnational organised crime threats originating from the Italian mafia, Chinese triads, Mexican cartels and Middle Eastern gangs," said the study released on Thursday.
"More recently, new geographically and ethnically identifiable organised crime groups are emerging from Brazil."
"The PCC's increasingly active presence in the Indo-Pacific region, including Australia, amplifies national-security threats."
"That expansion reflects a deliberate strategy to exploit regional vulnerabilities and tap into lucrative markets."
The 20-page report, 'The Pacific cocaine corridor: A Brazilian cartel's pipeline to Australia', found that drug cartels, not just the PCC, were increasingly targeting the Pacific because users are willing to pay top dollar for a gram of cocaine.
Australians pay some of the highest prices with up $420 per gram representing a major windfall for crime gangs.
Report author Lieutenant-Colonel Rodrigo Duton said the PCC's "tactical shift" from consorting with local drug traffickers to deploying its own foot soldiers in the Pacific happened three years ago.
He pointed to the case Brazilian of diver Bruno Borges Martins who was found floating and unresponsive near packages containing about 55kg of cocaine with a street value of around $20 million near the Port of Newcastle.
The drug mule was sent to Australia by the PCC to help a purchasing group retrieve cocaine concealed in the keel of a ship.
Two days after police found Borges's body, a Queensland superyacht tour operator, James Blake Blee, was arrested while trying to flee Australia for Singapore.
NSW Police said he was the mastermind behind the drug-trafficking scheme and was responsible for illegally bringing the two Brazilians into the country.
Blee pleaded guilty to charges of importing a commercial quantity of drugs, dealing with more than $100,000 from the proceeds of crime and people smuggling and was sentenced to at least seven years and six months in jail in November 2024.
Mr Duton pointed to another major drug bust by federal police in 2020 after getting tipped off by US Homeland Security, as an example of the sophisticated and transnational reach of the PCC.
More than 500kg of cocaine with an estimated street value of nearly $250 million were seized after being found hidden in 275 boxes of banana pulp that were buried among a 2000 fruit box shipment.
The report called for increased policing and intelligence collaboration between Australia and Brazil, including financial surveillance of transactions, particularly cryptocurrency, to disrupt the crime cartel's funding channels.
