Who killed Paulo Rocaro? Who killed and who ordered the killing of Luiz Henrique “Tulu”?

By Bob Fernandes

The following story is one full of superlatives. It starts on the place itself, the conurbation with 205,000 inhabitants formed by the Brazilian city of Ponta Pora and its 88,000 inhabitants and Paraguayan city of Pedro Juan Caballero and its 117,000 inhabitants.

Plural superlatives, not because of the number of inhabitants, but of what happens there and the things and people that cross this border.

Paraguay is one of the five largest marijuana producers in the world. Cocaine comes from Bolivia and Colombia through the Paraguay swamp and, almost always, by aircraft. And there’s also gun smuggling.

Ponta Pora and Pedro Juan Caballero is the focal point of a dry border covering 1,290 kilometers between Brazil and Paraguay.

“Dry border” means that in the space of time between this line and the next, you can move from one country to another, without any kind of control.

Indeed, there are murders in the universe of journalism on this border in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, distant 315 kilometers from the capital city of Campo Grande.

There are executions, some of them spectacular, but not just of journalists. However, in 2012, two journalists were killed in an avenue called Avenida Brasil, in the heart of Ponta Pora.

In the Ponta Pora / Pedro Juan Caballero border region, journalism has elastic rules, with multifaceted characters.

Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues, or Paulo Rocaro, 51 years old, editor-in-chief of Jornal da Praça, was murdered on the night of February 12, 2012.

Luiz Henrique “Tulu” Rodrigues Georges ran the same Jornal da Praça. Tulu was murdered on October 4, 2012, three days before his 45th birthday.

The executions and their motivations can be told as follows.

Eleven-thirty at night. Paulo Rocaro had just left a tense political meeting and, alone, drove his Fiat Idea on Avenida Brasil, close to the Hotel Frontier.

His wife, Hilda Henchl, was driving another car, some 70 meters ahead. Next to the hotel, Hilda heard gunfire.

They were, in fact, twelve shots from a 9mm pistol. Two men had approached the Fiat Idea on a motorcycle, and the one on the back of the motorcycle shot.

Nine shots hit Paulo Rocaro in the head and chest. Three bullets pierced the car, which stops almost in front of the Hotel Frontier.
Henchl tried to help her husband. Firefighters helped Paulo Rocaro, who died at dawn, at the Regional Hospital.

Claudio Rodrigues de Souza – known as “Claudinho Meia Água” and charged with other crimes in the past – would be appointed as the mastermind behind the killing.

Initially accused of being the hitmen, Luciano Rodrigues de Souza, nephew of Claudinho “Meia Água”, and Hugo Stancatti Ferreira da Silva, were not kept in prison.

Suspicions fell on hitman Lorenzo Spínola But Spínola would be shot in downtown Pedro Juan Caballero almost four months later, on May 7.

He was killed in broad daylight, at 4 pm, on the corner of the Avenida Nacoes Unidas and Avenida Antonio Lopez. Spínola was driving his truck when, from the back of a motorcycle, a hitman shot him in the neck.

He left the car and, before being able to hide nearby, died with more shots.

Eight months after February 12, and 50 meters from where Rocaro, from Jornal da Praça, was executed, Luiz Henrique “Tulu” Rodrigues Georges, from the same newspaper, was also shot.

Tulu was on the same Avenida Brasil, inside a Mitsubishi Pajero Dakar. Security guards Felipe Neri Vera and Ananias Duarte were scorting him.

Tulu was heading towards one of the exits of the city. He pulled the car over to talk to someone. It was his end.

There is still a significant curtain of silence surrounding the crime, but it is known that more than 20 rifle shots were fired.

Tulu got three shots. One on the head and two on the chest. His bodyguards Felipe Vera and Ananias Duarte were also hit. Felipe Vera died of two rifle shots, one in the head and one in the chest. Ananias Duarte was hospitalized. His family removed him from the Regional Hospital, crossed the street, and fled to Paraguay.

From Paraguay, Ananias traveled to South America and just died. A natural death. A heart disease.

Tulu was shot and killed at four-twenty pm on a Thursday. On Avenida Brasil.

The alleged reasons – even if filled with gaps – do not allow a direct link between the two crimes, although both men killed were from the same Jornal da Praça.

The links are only those designed by fate, as will be seen throughout this history.

Editor-in-chief of Jornal da Praça, Paulo Rocaro wrote articles for the column “Gaivota Pantaneira” (or “The Pantanal Gull”) in the Mercosul News website, and published a fiction book about the border named “The storm: When crime takes over the law to maintain order”.

At the murder site, the Ponta Pora Press Club honored Rocaro with a plaque. Entitled “A cry against impunity,” the plaque has his name and is topped Rocaro’s symbol, a Pantanal gull.

The concrete support of the plaque remains firmly in place. However, the gull was severed weeks after the ceremony. And months before Tulu was murdered almost next door, on the same avenue called Brasil.

Chief of the General Investigations Section of the Civil Police, Rodolfo Daltro arrived in the city five years after the crimes. He said, matter-of-factly:

“I guarantee that, here, 90% or an even higher percentage of homicide crimes involve a matter of settling accounts or witness elimination. In both cases, the mode of execution and the type of guns are characteristic of the crimes committed by drug dealers.”

Chief of police for a region with ten municipalities, Clemir Viera Júnior said:

“Paulo Rocaro wrote very well, he was daring, an opinion leader, a leader among journalists and also in politics. I read his articles; he didn’t get into the criminal area much; [his work] was more in the social and political areas.”

What is known of the reason for the murder of Paulo Rocaro?

That on the night of the murder, he had left a tense meeting at the home of former mayor Vagner Piantoni. Rocaro was linked to his party (PT), and his candidacy for mayor was discussed on occasion.

Rocaro supported Piantoni and threatened candidate Sudalene Machado with a dossier. Machado was married to the businessman Cláudio Rodrigues de Souza, or “Claudinho Meia Agua.”

Former president of PC do B party in Ponta Pora, “Claudinho Meia Agua” – accused by the police of being “responsible for Rocaro’s death” – would be murdered seven months later.

He was killed in the morning, on a busy avenue in the city of Jandira, state of Sao Paulo, next to the hotel Talisma, with 28 shots. Thirteen hit Claudinho “Meia Agua” in the back. Two in the head.

“Meia Agua” was on pretrial release after being sentenced to 17 and a half years for murder. Amid the news of his death, an acronym stood out: PCC.

There are different versions of the murder of Luiz Henrique “Tulu” Rodrigues Georges.

Lourenço Veras, known as Leo Veras, a Brazilian journalist working in Ponta Pora and Pedro Juan Caballero, talked about the crime.

He said:

“The strongest version is that it would be a family dispute and that Tulu would have participated (a year earlier) in the execution of Daniel “Danielito” Georges, his cousin, who was kidnapped.”

Shortly before disappearing in 2011, at the age of 42, Danielito was in the state of Sao Paulo, where he was on trial for drug trafficking.
In the story of Danielito, the name Claudinho “Meia Agua” reappeared – he was also the main accused of Rocaro’s death.

Meia Agua was arrested for 24 days between April and May 2012, as a suspect of involvement in Danielito’s presumed death.

The father of Danielito – and uncle of Tulu – is Fahd Jamil Georges, the powerful “Fuad Jamil”.

The focus of this series of reports, videos, and documentaries is the murder of Brazilian journalists, but, as it turns out, to tell this story, there is no way to avoid history.

This is specially true on a border that can be a symbol of a country that registers the murder of almost 60,000 inhabitants each year.

To tell the stories of the border and its superlatives, it is necessary to remember at least some of those who have disputed the control of this territory of drug trafficking and narcopolitics.

The 1970s and 1980s are our landmarks to tell this story since those who were not killed since then are dying from natural causes or retiring.

Daniel’s father, Fahd Jamil Georges lived in a 2,000 square meter fortress mansion in Ponta Pora when we visited the city.

This same mansion was seized by order of Judge Odilon de Oliveira in 2015 while sentencing Georges to 20 years in prison for smuggling, drug trafficking, money laundering, and tax evasion. A fugitive in Paraguay, Georges, known as “Fuad Jamil” or “El Padrino,” was acquitted in 2009 by the Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region. Then he got his mansion back.

Starting with cigarette smuggling, Georges began his fortune in the 1970s, when Alfredo Stroessner was the dictator in Paraguay.

The website of the Giovanni Falcone Brazilian Institute (IBGF) informs:

“The territorial control maintained by the group led by Georges was of interest to Operation Condor, that is, to that task-force of hunting against opponents of the exception regimes in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil.”

In the 1980s, Georges would approach Lino Oviedo, a sudden millionaire general who would try to preside over the country with the fall of dictator Stroessner.

To name only the most famous, since then one of those who sought to control drug trafficking in this region was Fernandinho Beira-Mar, a well-known drug trafficker. Before being arrested in Colombia on April 21, 2001, Beira-Mar worked with Danielito, the son of Fuad Jamil.

The ABC Color newspaper reported that Danielito – as well as Beira-Mar – negotiated with “senior FARC Chiefs.”

Also in 2001, Beira-Mar ordered the killing of Paraguayan João Morel, until then known as the leader of drug trafficking in the region.

Morel was killed by “chucho” (dagger) blows inside the Maximum Security Penal Establishment (EPSM), in Campo Grande. This murder initiated a killing spree that would last for eight days in January 2001 and go down in the history of the border as “The massacre of Capitan Bado.”

By order of Beira-Mar, two sons of João Morel, Ramon and Mauro, were also killed, eliminating the family that fought for the control of the drug trafficking in the region of Capitan Bado, Paraguay, and Coronel Sapucaia, Brazil.

Brazilian criminal organization Comando Vermelho (CV) has been on the border since the 1990s. PCC, another criminal organization, has increasingly acted as a candidate for command.

The space was disputed by Jorge Rafaat Toumani, the “King of the Frontier”, who was shot in the middle of a street in Pedro Juan Caballero. The crime is a milestone of the PCC’s influence on the border.

Years before, Rafaat had been convicted by the Brazilian courts for money laundering and drug trafficking, and was imprisoned for three years. In 2014, the above-mentioned judge Odilon de Oliveira, imposed a new sentence on Rafaat: 47 years in prison for cocaine trafficking, money laundering, etc.

Rafaat’s connections included Italian ´Ndrangheta and, inevitably, Colombian FARC – both criminal organizations familiar to narco bosses of that border.

Supported by a habeas corpus from the Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region, Rafaat was freed. He regained the status that his various companies earned him until the cinematic murder on June 15, 2016.

It happened at 6.45 pm on Rua Teniente Herrero. In three cars, security guards armed with pistols and AK-47 rifles escorted Rafaat. The cars passed in front of a school — and the attack began. In an armored Hummer, Rafaat took the lead and left the escort behind him.

A truck stopped meters in front of the Hummer. It was a silver Hyundai Hilux, with rear seats and one of the window glass removed. Brazilian Sergio Lima dos Santos, a member of the Comando Vermelho and former police officer, was inside the truck.

Santos fired the .50 Browning M2 anti-aircraft machine gun. Sixteen of the 100-plus shots destroied the armor of the Hummer’s glass – and also Rafaat’s chest and skull. Much of Raffat’s brain was found in the Hummer’s back seat.

The shooting – which reportedly involved about 30 hitmen – continued for another ten minutes. In the days and weeks that followed, there was no shortage of dead at the border.

Injured during the attack, according to the Paraguayan police, sniper Sergio dos Santos was reportedly taken to the home of Jarvis Pavao’s daughter before being arrested. Brazilian Jarvis Chimenes Pavao was considered the “Chief of the Triple Border” – Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina – even while imprisoned in Asunción. He was suspected of organizing, from inside the jail, the consortium of factions that killed Rafaat.

In addition to Pavao and Comando Vermelho, the crime consortium included Elton Rumich da Silva, known as “Gala” and appointed as a boss of the PCC in the region.

The assassination of Rafaat would lead to revenge killings, such as that of Pavao’s brother, Ronny Chimenes, on March 14, 2017. He was shot by a 9mm gun at 6 pm while leaving the gym in downtown Ponta Pora

Lourenço “Leo” Veras has been a journalist for 13 years. He says he had previously served the Brazilian Army Intelligence for 26 years.

Leo – who said that Paulo Rocaro was “a master of journalism in the border region” – works for Nova FM and two Paraguayan radio stations broadcasting in Portuguese, 98 Cerro Cora and 104 Oasis. He also owns a website, Pora News, and works for Paraguayan journalist Candido Figueredo Ruiz, a correspondent for ABC Color in Pedro Juan Caballero.

Author of deep reports on drug trafficking and narcotics on the border, threatened with death, Candido Figueredo Ruiz has already suffered two attacks – in one of them, 14 machine gun shots hit his house. For more than 20 years, he has lived 24/7 with security guards protecting him.

Candido Figueredo is threatened for having exposed the relationship between drug trafficking and what he called “narcopolitics” in his country, Paraguay. He also exposed the Brazilian presence in international traffic from the border. Invited respectfully by Fernandinho Beira-Mar, Candido Figueredo interviewed him in the Federal Police jail in Brasília.

As a reporter and photographer, Leo Veras covers in the streets what Candido Figueredo – a man with a target on his chest and always surrounded by an escort – cannot or does not need to do.

In interviews, Candido has already reported that traffickers from all over the world have connections “in an uncontrolled border area, full of corrupt politicians and police officers.”

Leo Veras said:

“Drug trafficking is highly influential in the region’s businesses and finances small, medium, and broad politics. It is not visible because the money runs in silence. So much so that politicians do not ask for greater security for the border region.”

The reporter said that political campaigns are usually financed by people linked to some type of crime:

“One person can support several strong candidates, and organized crime, entrepreneurs and traders, and play on both teams betting on both sides of the political arena.”

Leo Veras left no room for questions.

“It starts with city councils. Then you have state congresses, the federal congress, mayors… Everyone gets some help.”

The regional chief of police of the Civil Police, Clemir Vieira, and the chief of investigations, Rodolfo Daltro, demanded: the Brazilian State needs to intensify Intelligence and defend our borders.

Agribusiness accounts for more than 90% of exports in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and soy represents almost a third of that. In the 121 kilometers from the city of Dourados to Ponta Pora, there is a sea of soy and, from time to time, corn. Mato Grosso do Sul was the 5th largest grain producer in the first half of 2017, with 8% of the production of cereals, vegetables, and oilseeds. The neighboring state of Mato Grosso leads with 25.4%.

Cleo Mazzotti is the Regional Chief of Police for Combating Organized Crime at the Federal Police in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. He said:

“There needs to be a physical barrier, but also intelligence work. It is an agricultural state, with many transport routes, relatively good roads, and side roads for the production flow…”

According to Mazzotti, such conditions favor the trafficking of marijuana, cocaine, and the smuggling of goods and weapons, creating a fierce dispute between criminal organizations for space. The sale of firearms, virtually open in Pedro Juan Caballero, obviously does not help: “One has just to cross the street and choose a gun,” said Leo Veras.

The journalist talked about the influence of crime on the local economy:

“The legal economy here is agriculture: both family farms and businesses. Organized crime moves the city – it is indeed an important part of the economy.”

Mazzotti said:

“It’s not the strongest point of the economy, but there is also this informal economy from crime, yes.”

Leo Veras said that the PCC would have four chiefs in the region, each with a function “and 120 to 200 men for each one”.

“Ten, fifteen years ago, it was all about the Comando Vermelho; currently it is the PCC”, said Paraguayan broadcaster Santiago Benítez.

“You can talk about [on air] facts and official information without giving names. Anyone who investigates and delves into a subject it at danger — it is a suicidal practice”.

Benítez crossed that line and lived moments of terror. They tried to kidnap his daughter in 2007, and two years later, his home was shot. From 2009 to 2013, Benitez was escorted. Until drug dealer Miguelito Nunez, author of the threats, was murdered by Emiliano Rojas, who was murdered later.

In order not to expose himself, Benitez set up his radio station, Radio Imperio, at his home. His subject is usually “politics.”

On the vaunted expansion of the PCC in the vacuum of Rafaat’s killing, Mazzotti, warns: imputing actions to the PCC ends up covering up other possible criminal groups:

“It is still necessary to detect whether it (PCC) is actually present in the region and what is happening. There are also organizations that do not belong to these larger criminal factions.”

For Rodolfo Daltro, chief of police, Ponta Pora is “a portrait of Brazil.” He said:

“When the organized crime of large centers, such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, migrates to the border, it’s necessary to change the bosses. There are one or more new bosses, and the coordination has changed.”

Long before Paulo Rocaro and Luiz Henrique “Tulu” Rodrigues Georges, there was a rumored murder of a journalist in Pedro Juan Caballero. In this story, fate wove the tangle that connects characters from the crimes of yesterday and today.

On April 26, 1991, close to the border of Pedro Juan Caballero and Ponta Pora, Santiago Leguizamón, 41 years old, father of three children, was executed. A sign was placed later in his memory, with the writing, “Homage to the martyr of Paraguayan journalism.” The initiative of colleague Candido Figueredo also includes a phrase from Leguizamón:

“Physical death is preferable to ethical death.”

Leguizamón wrote about drug trafficking, money laundering, and soy smuggling. Fahd “Fuad Jamil” was being denounced as responsible.

Around noon on that April 26, 1991 – incidentally, “Journalist’s Day” — José Aparecido de Lima and José Francisco Araulho shot Leguizamón 21 times. They returned to the car driven by someone named Bras Vaz de Moura and, crossing the street, returned to Brazilian territory.

The trio was arrested and accused the cousins Georges – Danielito e Tulo – as the ones who ordered the killing. Danielito is the son of Fuad Jamil, who disappeared exactly 20 years later, leaving the suspicion that his cousin, Tulu, was involved in his disappearance.

Tulu, the director of Jornal da Praça, was murdered by someone still unknown – and the only version available is that of “family hit.” The responsibility for ordering the crime is also unknown.

In the past 26 years, 14 journalists were murdered in the neighboring country – almost all of these crimes remain unpunished. Most of those killed worked on the radio. Broadcasters from this border usually adopt more than one language, between Portuguese, Spanish, and Guarani.

Pedro Juan Caballero has casinos that Ponta Pora – literally on the other side of the road — does not have. But in these two cities that live like one in everyday life of the other, there is a touch of Cinderella. For ordinary people, life ends around midnight. For other cities, there is something else. From this hour on, SUVs and luxury cars begin to circulate. And no police officers on the streets. If SUVs and luxury cars are riding in escort lube, distance is recommended, and it is time to go home.

“Here, journalists walk on the razor’s edge,” said Leo Veras, who also had to be escorted for some time. He gave up because it “hindered the conversation with the sources”. Veras and his family have almost no social life. Cíntia Carolina Gonzalez, Veras’ wife, Cintia, is in medical school. The course costs 900 reais per month.

The college belonged to the late drug dealer Rafaat, who owns another medical school, farms, real estate, and other companies to launder money as so many other “businessmen” on the border do.

Cíntia wants to be a forensic expert, so she is already accompanying her husband Veras. Mother and children, Alex, 8 years old, and Alice, 11 years old, often visit crime scenes with Leo Veras. The children paid attention when the father said:

“You can tell when there’s going to be a murder, the city is silent a while before, even my children already realize this fact.”
Veras held off his children, pointed to the fragile door of his home in Pedro Juan Caballero and said, jokingly, but knowing it was a grave matter:

“I always ask that my death be not violent, not with so many rifle shots.”

Journalists Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues or “Paulo Rocaro”, and Luiz Henrique “Tulu” Rodrigues Georges are buried in the Cristo Rei Cemetery. Ponce dos Santos Martins has been an undertaker in Cristo Rei for over 30 years.

Shoeshine boy at 13 years-old, popsicle seller, gas station attendant, and hotel employee, Martins often served the influential and controversial Georges family, the family of Fuad Jamil, his son “Danielito” and his nephew Luiz Henrique “Tulu”. The undertaker saw Paulo Rocaro being buried and buried Tulu, whom he had known since he was a child. He is distressed.

One of Martins’ six children got a scholarship in Dourados. He’s studying journalism. The undertaker does not hide his concern:

“In my opinion, it’s a dangerous profession. How many journalists have I buried already?”