THE body of Brit journalist Dom Phillips has been found in the Amazon amid fears he was killed by the "fish mafia".
Phillips' wife Alessandra Sampaio confirmed her husband was found with indigenous expert Bruno Pereira on Monday, according to a report.
Brazilian journalist André Trigueiro said Alessandra informed him of the tragic news.
He wrote on Twitter: "Alessandra, wife of Dom Phillips, has just informed me that the bodies of her husband and indigenist Bruno Pereira have been found."
Brazilian authorities are yet to confirm whether the bodies belong to the two men.
Foreign correspondent Phillips, 57, and his guide Pereira, 41, vanished last week in the Brazilian jungle last week.
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The men were in the Sao Rasael community and were returning by boat to the nearby city of Atalaia do Norte but never arrived.
It comes after search teams earlier found one of the men's backpack and laptop and what appeared to be "human" organic material in a river where the both vanished in the Amazon.
Local fisherman Amariledo ‘Pelado’ da Costa has been arrested over the disappearances and blood was discovered on a tarp in his wooden boat.
Police said they have collected genetic material from the missing duo to compare with the blood.
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Cops have been granted an extra 30 days to keep da Costa detained as they continue to investigate.
According to ABC News, police have honed in their investigation on members of Brazil's "fish mafia".
The mayor of Atalais do Norte, Denis Paiva, told reporters without providing more details that the "crime’s motive is some personal feud over fishing inspection".
This international network pays poor fishermen to fish illegally in the country's second-largest indigenous area, authorities claim.
According the US outlet, the scheme is run by local businessmen who pay fishermen to enter the Javari Valley to catch fish and deliver it to them.
Fishermen have been known to scout the area for Arapaima – a 440-pound fish that can reach ten feet.
Federal police are also not ruling out other lines of investigation, pointing to the region's heavy nacro trade.
Paledo is the only known suspect under arrest.
Locals who were with Phillips and Pereira before they disappeared claim they say Paledo brandish a rifle at them the day before they disappeared.
And another witness described him as a "very dangerous man".
He denies any wrongdoing and claims Brazil's military police tortured him to get a confession, his family told the Associated Press.
Cops are focusing their investigation of poachers and illegal fishermen in the area.
Pereira often clashed with these groups as he organized indigenous patrols of the local reservation.
Witnesses said they last saw Phillips, a freelance reporter who has written for the Guardian and The Washington Post, last Sunday.
His companion Pereira, an expert on local tribes, had been a senior official with government indigenous agency Funai.
The two men were on a reporting trip in the remote jungle area on the border between Peru and Colombia that is home to the world's largest number of uncontacted indigenous people.
The wild and lawless region has lured cocaine-smuggling gangs, along with illegal loggers, miners and hunters.
The pair's disappearance has echoed globally, with Brazilian icons from soccer great Pele to singer Caetano Veloso joining politicians, environmentalists and human rights activists in urging President Jair Bolsonaro to step up the search for them.
After criticism that the government had dragged its feet in the crucial first days of the case, Bolsonaro told the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles on Friday that the Brazilian armed forces were working "tirelessly" to find the two men.
The streets of Atalaia do Norte, the largest riverside town near where the men were last seen, have grown busy in recent days with soldiers in camouflaged trucks, along with the distant sound of helicopters absent earlier this week.
By Friday, some 150 soldiers had been deployed via riverboats to hunt for the missing men and interview locals.
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Indigenous search teams have been looking for the pair since last Sunday.
Paledo was taken into custody on Tuesday and was charged with illegal possession of drugs and restricted ammunition.
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