Official: Criminal gang suspected of being responsible for sugar cane fires in Brazil

Some of the suspects arrested for setting fire to sugar cane fields in São Paulo state told police they had links to an organized crime gang and were retaliating against government anti-crime measures, a senior state official said on Tuesday.

The fires, which broke out last week, spread rapidly across parched fields over the weekend at the height of the country's dry season, destroying thousands of hectares of sugar cane plantations and sending up clouds of smoke that enveloped surrounding towns.

The state's agriculture minister, Guilherme Piai, told Reuters that the fires broke out at the same time in different locations, suggesting that they were not accidents.

The government suspects that one of Brazil's largest criminal gangs, the Primeiro Comando da Capital – commonly known as PCC – was behind the fires in retaliation for measures to combat the criminal trade in contaminated fuel.

“We don't know the exact motives, but some said they had links to the PCC. Others naively wanted revenge on the agribusiness industry, the driving force of the Brazilian economy,” said Piai.

Organized crime has bought up bankrupt fuel plants and hundreds of gas stations, he said, adding that the fires could be retaliation for government measures to combat organized crime.

PCC was founded in 1993 by inmates of a maximum security prison in Sao Paulo and developed from drug trafficking into the most powerful and feared criminal gang in Brazil.

Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro had previously described the fires in the sugar cane fields as criminal, but did not provide any details.

More than 2,100 fires ravaged sugarcane fields, burning 59,000 hectares (146,000 acres) of sugarcane and cropland. Sao Paulo accounts for about half of Brazil's sugarcane area.

According to the Orplana Sugarcane Producers' Association, the fires caused an estimated $63.59 million (R$350 million) in damage.

The state governor, Tarcisio de Freitas, estimated total losses from crop failures and other damage to property and businesses at over 1 billion reais.

Since Thursday, four men have been arrested after being caught with canisters of petrol with which they planned to set fields on fire, Freitas said. On Tuesday, police reported the arrest of two more men who were seen on surveillance cameras setting vegetation on fire.

Luis Fernando Rocha, a federal prosecutor investigating the fires, said there was no evidence so far of coordinated arson.

“It was a crime. But so far we have no evidence that it was organized crime,” he said.