An investigation by the Civil Police and the state prosecutors' office of Bahia has identified an Army corporal as a supplier of weapons and restricted-use ammunition to criminal organizations in Salvador, the state capital. According to a report aired on Sunday (13) by Fantástico, TV Globo's weekly newsmagazine, Corporal Deivison dos Santos Ferreira, assigned to the 6th Army Police Battalion in Salvador, negotiated rifle ammunition, grenades and firearms with members of a group that resold drugs and weapons to gangs. The soldier is an investigated party and, according to his lawyers, denies all accusations.
The evidence came from mobile phones seized in April at a house in Itapuã, a Salvador neighborhood used to store and prepare drugs. One phone belonged to Gabriel Reis Oliveira, whom police describe as responsible for buying and reselling weapons and drugs to different gangs, and on it investigators found conversations attributed to the corporal. Although he identified himself in the chats with a single emoji, he allegedly handed over his CPF, Brazil's taxpayer ID, and a Pix key, used in the country's instant-payment system, to receive payments. That data allowed police to confirm his identity.
Timeline of the case
The inquiry began in March, according to G1 Bahia, and led to an operation this week with about 250 officers. Fantástico reported that the operation arrested 33 suspects: 27 in Salvador and its metropolitan region, two in the interior of Bahia, three in Sergipe and one in São Paulo. The phase carried out on Thursday (10), reported by G1 Bahia, detained 23 people in cities including Salvador, Camaçari, Lauro de Freitas, Simões Filho, Juazeiro and Senhor do Bonfim, as well as in municipalities of São Paulo, Sergipe and Espírito Santo. Police say the group moved more than 4 million reais and split its tasks into command, finance, storage, logistics and drug-sales cells, shipping 5.56-caliber ammunition through a front company.
According to investigators, the corporal sold about 1,000 rifle rounds in calibers 5.56 and 7.62 to that group alone. Negotiations also involved grenades, though the exact quantity diverted has not been established. The main investigative theory is that ammunition and grenades were taken during military exercises: leftover material from training drills, including sessions in Paulo Afonso, in the interior of Bahia, was supposed to return to the unit's armory, and investigators suspect stock records were altered to hide the difference. The corporal also offered pistols and rifles in the chats, but there is no confirmation yet that those weapons came from Army stocks.
The Army and the defense
In a statement to Fantástico, the command of the 6th Military Region said the corporal has been held in preventive custody since August under an order from Brazil's military courts, in a separate investigation into the disappearance of ballistic vests, and that he will remain in military custody at the disposal of the justice system. One of this week's arrest warrants targeted the soldier, but he was already in detention.
The corporal's lawyers said in a statement that he denies all accusations and that "at the appropriate time, all the facts will be clarified." They added that they are working to have the pretrial detentions revoked.
The next steps lie with the Civil Police and the prosecutors. Investigators are trying to trace the origin of the weapons and ammunition and to identify other participants in the scheme, since in several chats the corporal refers to other people involved in supplying grenades and ammunition. For the Civil Police, it is still too early to say whether other soldiers took part in the organization, but that possibility has not been ruled out. No dates for further steps in the investigation have been announced.