Brazil frees 16 Paraguayans forced to work in slave-like conditions

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Paraguayans were located in a subterranean bunker on the plant’s premises after several hours of searches and after an operation that dismantled a criminal organization dedicated to cigarette counterfeiting and smuggling, the Federal Police said in a statement.

During the execution of a search warrant in the municipality of Triunfo, 16 Paraguayan workers were located in the basement of the plant, in a kind of bunker, “where they were kept hidden,” according to the Federal Police statement.

“The hiding place could only be accessed through a hydraulic elevator,” the agency added in a statement in which it clarified that the victims of the crime of slave-like labor were only found and rescued in the afternoon, after extensive searches in the illegal plant.

In addition to smuggling and counterfeiting, the dismantled organization was under investigation “for recruiting Paraguayan citizens to work in the illegal production of cigarettes in slave-like conditions,” the Federal Police said.

According to the statement, once they entered Brazil through the border city of Foz do Iguaçu, the recruited Paraguayans had their cell phones confiscated and were taken to the plant, which they could only leave at the end of a production cycle that could last between 6 and 8 months.

According to investigators’ estimates, the illegal plant produced some 10 million packs of cigarettes per month, earning the criminal organization around R$50 million (US$8.9 million).

In the operation involving Federal Police and Federal Tax Administration agents, 40 arrest and 56 search and seizure warrants were served in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná and São Paulo.

Federal agents also served warrants for the seizure of 56 vehicles, 13 properties and assets deposited in the bank accounts of 23 suspects totaling R$600 million.

According to the Federal Police, the organization began to be investigated in 2020 after uncovering that a Brazilian manufacturer was clandestinely producing packs of Paraguayan cigarette brands in the country.

“Part of the cigarettes produced would supply the underground market in Uruguay and Brazil,” the statement adds.