Twenty-two tonnes of sugar were seized in the Paris region and eighteen people arrested in France, Spain and Dubai. The network had ramifications to Colombia.
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It all started in June 2021, when the Nice antenna of the Finance Judicial Investigation Service (SEJF) is seized with a partial unemployment fraud file. A company, located in Créteil and without any employee, does not contribute to URSSAF but nonetheless requested state aid for 42 employees. An article 40 is sent to the Créteil prosecutor’s office, ultimately downtown for the benefit of Nice, where the company is domiciled. The damage is estimated at 120,000 euros, an amount certainly minimal with regard to other embezzlement noted in the middle of COVID-19. But as they are investigating, customs officials go up a more solid thread: the targeted company appears linked to several other companies of the same type, whose identity of managers has been usurped.
Several of the protagonists placed under surveillance notably use an application called “On/Off”, which allows you to generate telephone numbers quickly and had already appeared in previous cases of scams of the same type. The investigative customs officials are convinced that these different empty shells are used above all to whiten money, funds from particular smoking tobacco. The surveillance of the team of criminals who seems to animate this network, and an exchange of information with the Colombian specialized services, then allow to thwart an import of 600 kg of cocaine by entering the product in the port of Cartagena, in Spain. Then the Belgian authorities update 12 tonnes of smuggling tobacco in Antwerp, whose traffic is linked to this same network.
liquid silver and precious stones
Technical investigations, always in progress, then make it possible to understand that an important import of cocaine is envisaged. The goods must be sent thanks to a clever process: mixed with a large amount of sugar aboard a cargo ship from a Colombian port. Thursday, May 5, the SEJF, the services of the Antisputants Office (OFAST), seized by three judges of investigation of the national jurisdiction responsible for the fight against organized crime (Junalco), lead a net, assisted of services foreign police in Spain and Dubai.
After meticulous monitoring, ten people are arrested in France, six of whom are placed in detention; Seven others are in Spain and one last, in Dubai. Nearly 22 tonnes of sugar conditioned in 900 bags are entered in Thiais (Val-de-Marne), after the cargo was discharged at the port of Le Havre (Seine-Maritime). The pipe collected by the investigators was correct: inside certain bags, traces of cocaine show that the product has been mixed with sugar.
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