Celso Luiz Rodrigues, known as Celsinho from Vila Vintém, known as one of the main drug traffickers in Rio in the 90s, was released earlier this afternoon (19), from the Gericinó Complex, in Bangu, in the west, and will respond to free proceedings. The departure was scheduled for yesterday morning (18), but did not take place.
According to lawyer Max Marques, who defends Celsinho, the cause of the delay was a problem in the procedures of the consultation carried out with the Archive Service (SARQ) of the Interstate Police (Polinter), to find out if the prisoner is protected due to other legal proceedings. .
The release was granted on the night of last Monday (17), after analysis by the judge of the Criminal Executions Court (VEP), Marcello Rubioli, who verified that there were no other penalties for the criminal that would prevent him from leaving the prison. This analysis was the condition for the trafficker to leave the prison, as determined by the judge Suimei Meira Cavalieri, of the 3rd Criminal Chamber, when she revoked Celsinho’s arrest, on Tuesday (11) of last week. In the decision, she also allowed him to go free in a process in which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for involvement in the invasion of the Rocinha favela, in the south of Rio, during a confrontation between rival factions in 2017.
A complaint by the Public Ministry of Rio de Janeiro (MPRJ) indicated that delegates Maurício Demétrio and Antônio Ricardo were at the forefront of a plan to incriminate the drug dealer for the invasion of Rocinha, to assist drug dealer Antônio Francisco Bonfim Lopes, alias Nem, in the dispute for control of drug sales in the community. With the MP’s statement, the judge understood that Celsinho was not responsible for organizing the invasion of Rocinha.
The former head of the Police Station for Repression of Crimes against Intangible Property of the Civil Police Maurício Demétrio, who was in office between March 2018 and March 2021, was arrested at his home, in a high-end condominium in Barra da Tijuca, west side of Rio, where R$240,000 in cash and three luxury armored cars were seized.
The arrest took place as part of Operation Carta de Corso, which took place on June 30 this year. When he was being taken to the headquarters of the Civil Police, Demétrio told the press that the money declared in his Income Tax was the result of an inheritance. About the cars, he said that only two were his and that the Police Internal Affairs was aware.
The former head of the Rocinha police station, Antônio Ricardo, the subject of a search and seizure warrant in the same operation, denied participating in the plan and blamed Demétrio for the involvement of his name in the accusation against Celsinho. “I trust justice and my summary acquittal,” he said in a video released to the press.
Transfer
In May 2017, Celsinho was transferred from the maximum security federal prison in Porto Velho, Rondônia, to the Laércio da Costa Pelegrino Penitentiary, Bangu I, in the Gericinó Complex, west of Rio. The reason for the transfer at that time was the expiration of his term of permanence in the federal unit, where he had been imprisoned since 2002. Appointed as the founder of a large criminal faction in Rio, Celsinho is currently imprisoned in the Lemos Brito Penitentiary, Bangu VI, in the same complex prison
In October 2016, he participated as a witness for the defense in a case against the trafficker of a rival faction, Luiz Fernando da Costa, Fernandinho Beira-Mar, tried for involvement in a rebellion in the Gericinó Complex, when four prisoners allied with Celsinho were killed. During the trial, the trafficker said he was a witness to pay a debt for having been kept alive in the 2002 riot.
