“Illegal fishing costs next to nothing”, he explained. In one instance, Saraiva said, his officers apprehended a boat carrying 600 river turtles, with a street value of over $100,000.Ī pirarucu fish is seized by the army after a federal police investigation examined a vessel seized by the taskforce for the rescue of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips at Atalaia do Norte, Amazonas, on 11 June. “We made dozens of stops in Manaus of boats that carried both drugs and pirarucu,” he said, adding that a single boat can carry five tonnes of pirarucu, which can eventually be sold for $50,000. Saraiva served as superintendent for the state of Amazonas until 2021, when he was sidelined by the Bolsonaro administration after leading an investigation that linked Brazil’s former environment minister Ricardo Salles to illegal logging in the rainforest. The illegal fishing industry in the Javari Valley has become just as lucrative as drug trafficking, and operates under an interlinked umbrella of organised crime, said Alexandre Saraiva, a senior federal police officer. Last week police said they had expanded their investigation of the murders to examine whether the killings had been commissioned, but said their working theory remained that it was “a crime of opportunity”. “They were involved with bad people,” Churrasco said of the suspected killers. The trigger was never pulled, but they sank his boat instead and Churrasco was left to swim for shore. “He put the gun in my face and threatened to kill me,” he recalled, saying the men had wanted access to fish illegally. Manoel Vítor Sabino da Costa, known as Churrasco. Churrasco was initially a suspect in the killing, but denied any knowledge or involvement. Law enforcement officials say the Javari Valley, an area the size of Portugal and home to the world’s largest concentration of uncontacted Indigenous tribes, is now Brazil’s second largest drug trafficking route, where the interwoven illicit industries of fishing, logging and mining have proliferated over the past decade.Ī few miles downstream from the makeshift checkpoint, at the small fishing community of São Rafael, the village president, Manoel Vítor Sabino da Costa, known as “Churrasco”, spoke of the many threats he has faced in recent years. It is the setting for a battle over access to resources that has intensified following the election of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in 2018. Such are the contrasts in this underreported part of the Amazon rainforest where magnificent natural beauty has become a backdrop to increasing violence and impunity. “Sometimes I can’t stop them, because if I did they would kill me.” “The fishermen get very angry if we don’t let them through,” Da Silva says, pointing to the stream, where a shaggy crested Amazon kingfisher sits on a branch scouring the water. Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira search map
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