It's the ultimate Christmas gift. A corporate thank-you for doing business in the past year. That's how the Red Command saw their Yuletide CD. Pressed specially for their best clients, it was a marketing ploy that couldn't go wrong. But then the gang - one of Brazil's most notorious narcotics traffickers - hadn't banked on the military police raid.
Now hundreds of copies of the pirate CD Prohibited Rap are in the vaults of a Rio de Janeiro police station. One gang member said: "It was the first time we had done anything like this. It would have been a nice thank-you for our best customers, the ones that brought more than five bags of cocaine. We were trying to do something special and now they've all been impounded. What are we going to give our people now?"
The CDs, embossed with the Red Command logo, came with a Happy Christmas and Joyous New Year message on the sleeve notes. Military police seized the CDs from a shack in the infamous Vila Cruzeiro slum along with fake bank-notes, 36 bags of cocaine and a stash of marijuana.
The search followed a tip-off about the gang's latest money-laundering operation. A police spokesman said: "The CDs were the last thing we expected to find on the raid. We never imagined that this gang would actually be giving Christmas presents. Our informants say that the leaders are more upset about losing the CDs than anything else. It is all very unusual."
The albums, which were being looked after by the drug dealers Elias Crazy, Alexander the Great and Flavio Buddha, were due to be hand-delivered in the next few weeks.
The CDs contain a Brazilian version of "gangsta" rap, with lyrics about kidnapping enemies, burning police informants and drug-trafficking.
The Red Command is one of Rio de Janeiro's most highly organised criminal gangs. Police have mounted a series of operations in an attempt to break their stranglehold on crack and cocaine-dealing - their main line of business. So far, all attempts to penetrate the high command and break up the cartel have failed.