Revenue Chief suggests Nikolas Ferreira's video opened a loophole in fintechs that benefited the PCC

The special secretary of the Federal Revenue, Robinson Barreirinhas, suggested this Thursday (28) that the video of federal deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG) published at the beginning of the year against new PIX monitoring rules, allowed the PCC to launder money from drug trafficking in investment funds of fintechs - mostly digital payment companies with more flexible rules than those of banks.

The operations were revealed earlier in three operations by the agency together with the Federal Police and the Public Ministry , which pointed to the use of the fuel chain to launder organized crime resources.

According to Barreirinhas, the new PIX oversight rules—which the congressman stated would lead to a tax on transfers—would also require fintechs to comply with regulations similar to those of banks, to monitor customer transactions for irregularities.

"We published this instruction in September of last year, effective January. We all know what happened in January. The Federal Revenue Service received the biggest attack in its history, with lies and fake news, falsely claiming that the normative instruction dealt with the taxation of payment methods," the secretary said at a press conference in São Paulo.

Barreirinhas was discussing Operation Hidden Carbon, one of three launched that morning against the PCC. In addition, the Federal Police conducted Operations Tank and Quasar, which had targets in common with the São Paulo operation.

He added, stating that “these fake news were so strong that, despite all the efforts of the Federal Revenue Service, we were unable to follow these lies, due to the strength of those who promoted them, which was already harming the use of instant payment methods.”

"We had to take a step back and revoke this normative instruction. And today's operations show who profited from these lies, from this fake news," he added.

At the same time that Robinson Barreirinhas blamed Nikolas Ferreira's video for opening a loophole for the illegal operations of fintechs with the PCC, the Federal Revenue's undersecretary of inspection, Andrea Costa Chaves, made a similar statement in a press conference in Brasília alongside the director-general of the Federal Police, Andrei Passos Rodrigues.

"The improvement [of the IRS regulation] included fintechs and was the target of a lot of fake news, and as a result of this operation, it is very clear that we end up losing the power to carry out risk analysis to identify, more quickly and efficiently, schemes like the one we identified in this operation," said the secretary.

New rules for fintechs

Shortly after speaking at a press conference in Brasília, Minister Fernando Haddad (Finance) stated that the Federal Revenue Service will issue new regulations requiring fintechs to comply with the same account monitoring rules as banks. The goal, he said, is to prevent new schemes like the one uncovered by the operation from occurring again, as well as uncover others that are currently being carried out.

"Starting tomorrow [Friday, the 29th], the Federal Revenue Service will classify fintechs as financial institutions. What does this mean? That fintechs will have to strictly comply with the same obligations as large banks. This increases the Revenue Service's oversight potential and its partnership with the Federal Police to target the sophisticated money laundering schemes used by organized crime," the minister stated.

The director-general of the Federal Police stated that this scheme used by fintechs was not exclusive to the PCC, and was available to "all sorts of criminals" who needed to launder money from illicit activities.

"It's not a money laundering scheme run by a specific criminal group or faction. It's a money laundering scheme available to anyone who wants to use it, such as tax evaders, drug traffickers, or any other criminal," he noted.

The three operations uncovered that the PCC was using the fuel supply chain to launder drug trafficking money through the production, distribution, and sale of adulterated gasoline and diesel to the end consumer.

R$30 billion was discovered in 40 investment funds owned by three registered operators. Their names were not disclosed, but the companies are headquartered on Avenida Faria Lima in São Paulo, considered the "heart" of the Brazilian financial market.