Brazil’s Federal Police is preparing to include business owners Ciro César Lemos and Elidiane Saldanha Lopes Lemos on Interpol’s international wanted list. The couple, who were convicted of money laundering for the First Capital Command (PCC), are fugitives and are cited in investigations that also involve influencer Deolane Bezerra, who was reported to be in custody at the time of the account. Investigators say there are indications that the two may have left Brazil.
According to information published by Metrópoles columnists Manoela Alcântara and Pablo Giovanni, the courts ordered the business owners’ names to be included in Interpol’s Red Notice system, a mechanism used to help locate people sought internationally. The Federal Police is carrying out the procedures required to issue the alerts because arrest warrants issued for the couple have not yet been executed.
An Interpol Red Notice is an international request to locate a person sought by a member country. It is not, by itself, an international arrest warrant. Any action taken after a person is located depends on the laws and procedures of the country where that person is found. In this case, the reported purpose of the requested notice is to broaden the efforts to find Ciro and Elidiane outside Brazil while the Brazilian arrest warrants remain outstanding.
The couple owns the Lado a Lado transport company, which São Paulo state Civil Police have identified as part of an alleged money-laundering scheme linked to the PCC. Investigators examined the company’s financial activity as one of the avenues in the Vérnix Operation investigation. The company’s accounts and transactions are relevant to the inquiry because investigators were seeking to understand how money may have moved through business accounts and whether those movements were connected to criminal activity.
Elidiane is also among the people cited in the investigation that led to Deolane Bezerra’s arrest on May 21. Investigators identified transactions they considered suspicious in accounts associated with the transport company and the business owner. The appearance of names or companies in an investigation does not, on its own, establish that every transaction was criminal; the reported findings are allegations and investigative conclusions that must be considered within the legal process.
Metrópoles reported that more than R$20 million moved through bank accounts related to Lado a Lado between 2015 and 2019. That amount is approximately more than $3.6 million, using an illustrative conversion of R$1 to $0.18. The outlet also reported that a review of Elidiane’s bank records revealed more than R$1 million in transactions in her personal accounts, equivalent to more than approximately $180,000 at the same conversion rate. According to the investigation, those amounts were associated with criminal activity.
The reported figures cover different accounts and categories of transactions: one concerns accounts related to the transport company over a period of several years, while the other concerns activity in Elidiane’s personal accounts. The information provided does not establish that the totals represent proceeds retained by the couple, nor does the total alone explain the purpose of each payment. Investigators’ assessment that the movements were connected to criminal activity is part of the case described in the report.
The inquiry into the couple’s alleged links to PCC-related investigations began after notes were found at Penitentiary II in Presidente Venceslau, in the interior of São Paulo state. In 2019, during an inspection at the prison, staff found pieces of paper in a cell’s sewage box after two inmates tried to dispose of them by flushing them down the toilet.
One of the messages referred to a “woman from the transport company.” That wording prompted police to investigate the company and the people responsible for it more closely. The notes provided a lead, according to the account, but investigators then pursued financial information about Lado a Lado to examine the business’s transactions and determine whether they supported the suspicions raised in the inquiry.
Following that lead, investigators analyzed the transport company’s financial operations and identified amounts they said had been moved for the benefit of the criminal organization. Financial investigations of this kind generally compare transactions, accounts, business records and other available information to assess whether money flows have a legitimate explanation or may be connected to illicit activity. The published account does not provide a transaction-by-transaction breakdown, so it does not specify how each payment was evaluated.
The case also connects to the broader investigation involving Deolane Bezerra, but the reported connection should be distinguished from a finding that every person mentioned in the separate inquiries committed the same conduct. The available account says Elidiane appears among the principal names in the investigation that resulted in Bezerra’s arrest and that suspicious transactions were identified in accounts linked to Elidiane and Lado a Lado. It does not detail the precise role investigators attribute to each person in every part of the inquiry.
With Ciro and Elidiane still at large, the Federal Police is seeking to expand the means available to locate them beyond Brazil. An Interpol notice can circulate identifying information among law-enforcement authorities in participating countries, helping them determine whether a person sought by another country has been located. The notice does not itself resolve the underlying criminal case, replace the arrest warrants or determine guilt; those matters remain subject to the relevant judicial proceedings.
As of the report, the arrest warrants for the couple had not been carried out, and the Federal Police was still completing the steps needed for the international alerts. The report said there were indications that the business owners had left Brazil, but it did not state where they might be or confirm their location. It also said Metrópoles had been unable to reach the defense attorneys for Ciro César Lemos and Elidiane Saldanha Lopes Lemos by the time the article was last updated. No response from their defense was included in the account.
The reported sequence therefore runs from the discovery of notes in a prison in 2019, to scrutiny of Lado a Lado’s financial activity, and then to efforts to locate the couple after arrest warrants were issued. The international notice is described as a further step in those efforts. The central issues presented in the report are the alleged movement of funds through accounts connected to the transport company, the suspected links investigators are examining, and the authorities’ attempt to find the two business owners while the legal process continues.
