Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has signed a sweeping new anti-crime measure into law, granting authorities expanded powers to target the financial infrastructure of organized criminal groups. The legislation, known as the Anti-Gang Law, introduces stricter penalties for crime leaders and provides the state with tools for what officials describe as the financial, logistical, and material dismantling of criminal organizations. The law marks a significant shift in how Brazil approaches the prosecution of serious crime.
Wellington Lima, Brazil’s Minister of Justice and Public Security, said the legislation represents meaningful progress in the fight against organized crime by incorporating financial strangulation mechanisms and strengthening the state’s capacity to respond to increasingly complex criminal structures. He emphasized that the law is designed to reach the highest levels of criminal networks using more effective and coordinated instruments. His comments came in an official statement released alongside the signing.
Although the law does not name any specific cryptocurrency or digital asset, it grants judges the authority to order precautionary measures including the seizure, attachment, blocking, or freezing of movable and immovable property, rights, and assets — explicitly including digital or virtual assets. These measures can be applied when sufficient evidence exists of a serious crime as defined under the new legislation. The broad language is seen as encompassing a wide range of crypto holdings that criminal organizations may control.
In certain circumstances, judges may also authorize the early sale of seized assets, with the resulting proceeds directed toward public security funds. Custody of assets seized under precautionary orders will generally fall to public authorities, unless a judge determines that material impossibility or technical inadequacy makes such custody impractical. This provision acknowledges the operational challenges that can arise when handling digital assets in a law enforcement context.
Those challenges have been evident in other countries. Authorities in South Korea previously failed to follow established crypto custody guidelines, resulting in the loss of access to approximately $1.4 million in Bitcoin. In a separate incident, representatives of South Korea’s National Tax Service posted photographs of seed phrases — the 12-word sequences used to access a crypto wallet’s private key — online, enabling an unknown individual to take $4.8 million worth of crypto tokens before eventually returning them.
The Brazilian legislation was submitted to congress in November, coinciding with broader government and central bank efforts to crack down on illegal activity involving Bitcoin and stablecoins. Around the same time, Brazilian authorities moved against an illegal Bitcoin mining operation in September. The Anti-Gang Law is the latest in a series of measures reflecting the government’s intent to address the growing intersection of digital finance and organized crime.
Originally reported by Decrypt.
