Police investigating a brazen murder at the arrivals area of Brazil’s main airport are pursuing at least three lines of inquiry in their attempt to track down the killers – and the possible masterminds of the shocking crime.
Antônio Vinicius Lopes Gritzbach, 38, was leaving São Paulo international airport on Friday afternoon when two hooded men jumped out of a car and fired a hail of bullets. The brazen attack, captured on security cameras, marked a dramatic escalation of criminal violence in the country.
Gritzbach, a former member of the First Capital Command (PCC) crime faction, was struck by 10 bullets and died on the spot.
Three bystanders were also hit. Uber driver Celso Araujo Sampaio de Novais, 41, was shot in the back and died hours later. The other two sustained less severe injuries: an employee of a contracted company remains under observation in the hospital, while a female passenger has been discharged.
“Public executions aren’t new to the PCC,” said Renato Sérgio de Lima, the president of the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety. “What stood out this time was the audacity of committing such a crime in a heavily monitored area: the second largest airport in Latin America, where several law enforcement agencies are present.”
According to the public prosecutor’s office, Gritzbach, a former real estate agent, helped the criminal group launder 30m reais (£4m) from international drug trafficking through property and petrol station investments.
He also reportedly received 100m reais from a PCC leader, Anselmo Becheli Santa Fausta, known as Cara Preta (Black Face), to invest in cryptocurrency. In 2021, Fausta demanded it back, but Gritzbach reportedly did not comply. That same year, Fausta and his bodyguard were murdered; prosecutors alleged Gritzbach had ordered the crime. The PCC, meanwhile, are reported to have put a bounty of 3m reais on his head.
Marked for death by the PCC, Gritzbach approached the public prosecutor’s office and offered to reveal details about the gang’s money-laundering operations in exchange for a plea deal. Last 31 October, he expanded his testimony, claiming police officers had taken bribes to shield gang members from investigation.
Eight days later, he was killed. The timing prompted a theory that police officers may have been involved in his death. Adding to the cloud of suspicion, Gritzbach had hired four police officers as bodyguards – something illegal under Brazilian law – but they were absent during the attack, reportedly due to a car breakdown en route to the airport.
On Tuesday, São Paulo’s public security department announced the suspension of the four officers, and four others who worked as Gritzbach’s security.
A third hypothesis is that Gritzbach was killed over a debt.
“This guy’s death suited a lot of people,” detective Osvaldo Nico Gonçalves, told the Brazilian newspaper Estadão. “We’ll follow the facts, regardless of whether they implicate members of the civil or military police,” he said.
Lima, the security expert, said the killing offered yet more proof that organised crime in Brazil has begun to reach the “scale” of Mexican cartels.
“The extent to which crime has contaminated the state and the formal economy – with money laundering in real estate, fuel networks, and cryptocurrencies – is reaching the levels of Mexico. And this is deeply concerning,” he said.
