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Fugitives and fake passports — Brazil’s ‘Cocaine Queen’ investigation and the R700m drug stash sent to SA

Fugitives and fake passports — Brazil’s ‘Cocaine Queen’ investigation and the R700m drug stash sent to SA
Captured poster of Gilberto Aparecido Dos Santos aka Fuminho (Image: Brzail government website)
Caryn Dolley
By Caryn Dolley
21 Dec 2023
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Several cocaine consignments shipped from Brazil have been intercepted in South Africa recently. Meanwhile, in Brazil, a trafficking queenpin accused and her partner were sentenced in a massive case involving a previous shipment — then they became fugitives.

There have recently been several interceptions of cocaine, concealed in cargo on ships, being smuggled into South Africa from Brazil.

Over two months until early December 2023, cocaine worth more than R360-million from Brazil was discovered in this country.

While investigations linked to the crackdowns continue, the South African Police Service (SAPS) has not provided any information about who may be in control of the mega drug consignments landing here.

Daily Maverick can now reveal details about individuals who Brazilian authorities say are linked to a R700-million cocaine stash that previously ended up in the Eastern Cape, as well as other shipments destined for countries including in Europe.

Clues across countries


Pairing information in court documents and government statements from Brazil, along with a SAPS press release, provides insight into how that gang operated.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Blood ties: South Africa caught in a web of murderous, drug-smuggling Brazilian gangs

Brazilian authorities have alleged a couple headed it — Karine de Oliveira Campos, who has been dubbed in some media reports there as the “Cocaine Queen” or “Queen of Coke,” and Marcelo Mendes Ferreira.

They have faced various legal issues.

Documents from the Federal Court of Santos, dated September 2020, showed that in a drug trafficking case, that included an incident involving 706 kilograms of cocaine that once landed in South Africa, Campos was sentenced to 17 years and two months in jail, while Ferreira was handed a 15 year and two-month sentence.

Other court papers state the couple had many assets but did not acquire money through legal means to justify what they owned.

It was alleged that, together with several others, they ran a sophisticated trafficking syndicate that included shell companies and specialised machinery.

The month after their sentencings, in October 2020, Campos reportedly got hold of a Macedonian passport under another name. 

(According to Associated Press, nine officials in North Macedonia’s interior ministry were later arrested “on suspicion of illegally issuing passports to overseas criminals.”)

In 2021 Campos’s sentence was changed to house arrest.

It seems that both she and Ferreira subsequently managed to give authorities the slip.

In July 2022 Brazil’s Federal Police published images — as part of an apparent wanted person’s poster — of Campos with varying hairstyles.

‘Fugitives from justice’


A few months later, in September 2022, Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry announced it had lodged complaints against 54 people involved in trafficking tons of cocaine to Europe.

That statement named Campos and Ferreira as being part of a syndicate known as “one of the largest international drug operators.”

It also said: “Both were sentenced to more than 15 years in prison… But they are fugitives from justice.”

By March this year, Campos was reportedly still on the run.

It is not clear what became of her and Ferreira, with a media report suggesting they may have at one point been in Spain.

The prison sentences she and Ferreira were handed, according to the Federal Public Ministry statement, related to a Brazilian police operation known as Alba Virus.

That operation was aimed at cracking down on traffickers “hiding large quantities of cocaine among legal cargo, in containers that boarded ships bound for Europe.”

It is in this matrix that South Africa is lodged.

Brazil to Eastern Cape


Campos appealed a previous court finding, relating to a drug trafficking conviction.

She was effectively convicted via association and not evidence.

A document on that appeal, dated 23 November 2023 and from Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice, said evidence was lacking when it came to proving Campos and Ferreira were directly involved in trafficking and that the legal penalties they faced should be reassessed accordingly.

However, the document added, “It is to be expected that people belonging to the highest level of the criminal organisation — in the case of the defendants — do not actually participate in the commission of the crime of trafficking, being in charge of its planning and financing, which makes it difficult to prove participation in this crime.”

The document contained further details about how the 706 kilograms of cocaine that Brazilian authorities linked to Campos and Ferreira ended up in South Africa.

It said a crime was carried out on 26 December 2018.

“A shipment of narcotics” — 706 kilograms of cocaine — was placed inside a container on a ship that was meant to end up at the Chennai port in India.

The cocaine was hidden between asbestos.

According to the November 2023 document, Brazilian authorities flagged the container as possibly problematic “based on the scanner images obtained by the Customs of the Port of Santos… which revealed the possibility of the container being loaded with narcotics due to the difference of density between the parts of the load.”

They alerted South African authorities because the ship was expected to dock next at the Port of Coega (also known as Port of Ngqura) in the Eastern Cape.

“The African authorities were successful in the inspection and seized 706kg of cocaine,” the document said.

A SAPS statement picks up what happened in this country.

It said that over several days from 27 December 2018 (a day after the cocaine was loaded onto the ship in Brazil) and into the new year, local and international cops monitored the vessel that was making its way to South Africa.

Search and R700-million cocaine


About 11 days into this operation, on 7 January 2019, South African authorities, including police and revenue service officers, conducted a raid at the Port of Coega in the Eastern Cape.

They discovered the 706 cocaine bricks worth R700-million hidden in the bottom floor of the ship beneath more than 3,600 containers.

The SAPS statement said “the cargo was clandestinely loaded into the ship” in Brazil.

It added that the ship was meant to have docked at Coega harbour before making its way “to Singapore before going to its final destination in India with the illegal cargo.”

According to the Brazilian court document from November, the cocaine had indeed been destined for Chennai, India.

It said other cocaine consignments linked to Campos and Ferreira were concealed between frozen chicken parts.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Coke smugglers playing chicken with South Africa’s port authorities

Coincidentally, Daily Maverick has before reported that cocaine hidden in frozen poultry has been found in Brazil, en route to South Africa.

‘Sophisticated network’


Meanwhile, during the court procedures in Brazil linked to Campos, a Federal Police officer, David Martins de Araújo Junior, had testified.

According to the November 2023 court document, the officer alleged that Campos and Ferreira “have been known since 2009 as drug traffickers, being considered the biggest drug traffickers in the region where they operated in [the Brazilian state of] Bahia.”

The officer had also testified that Campos was linked to trafficking crime via a “network of information.”

According to the November 2023 court document: “The evidence is sufficient to prove that the defendants were strongly structured and organised to send large quantities of cocaine abroad. 

“[They] were involved in a sophisticated network aimed at international drug trafficking, all with clearly defined stability, permanence and division of functions, with the aim of sending drugs to the European continent.”

Repeat crackdowns


Daily Maverick has reported extensively on cocaine trafficking between Brazil and South Africa.

Over the past few months, several interceptions involving drugs moving between the two countries were made.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Cocaine’s deadly destinations – the Durban link to the bodies piling up in Brazil’s drug battles

In October a vessel making its way from Brazil was intercepted in Durban harbour and R70-million worth of cocaine was discovered on it.

Two days later, as part of follow-up investigations into the shipment of drugs, police discovered another cocaine consignment from Brazil, worth about R80-million.

At the start of November 2023, police intercepted a R65-million cocaine consignment at a seaport in Gqeberha, in the Eastern Cape.

About a month later, the SAPS announced that cocaine, worth R151-million, was seized in Durban — it had also been shipped from Brazil. 



Daily Maverick has before reported that global traffickers seem to favour the Port of Durban when operating in and via South Africa. 

Criminal history 


In this journalist’s book, Clash of the Cartels: Unmasking the global drug kingpins stalking South Africa, Brazil is among the countries focused on.

A section provides details about a cocaine interception that happened in the Eastern Cape in 2010 when 166 kilograms of the drug was discovered there.

The book states that Brazilian court documents showed that in 2010, certain individuals’ conversations were intercepted and through that, it was ascertained cocaine was being pumped into South Africa, notably via the Port of Santos in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

“This is a direct pipeline connecting South Africa to Brazil’s — and the world’s — deadliest criminal gangs,” the book says.

Gilberto Aparecido Dos Santos, cocaine Captured poster of Gilberto Aparecido Dos Santos aka Fuminho (Image: Brzail government website)



Brazil’s Gilberto Aparecido dos Santos, also known as Fuminho was also referenced in terms of the 2010 Eastern Cape cocaine bust.

Daily Maverick reported on how he visited South Africa ahead of his 2020 arrest in Mozambique. 

Dos Santos was linked to one of Brazil’s most powerful criminal gangs, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), or First Capital Command.

His presence in South Africa suggested that the PCC had extended its tentacles to this country. DM

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