On the sidelines of negotiations on the autonomy of the island, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, wants to accentuate the pressure on “organized crime”.
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“We cannot risk leaving Corsica in the hands of a certain mafia.” Ten years after Manuel Valls, then Minister of the Interior, his successor Gérald Darmanin no longer hesitates to pronounce the word taboo. A choice that is not only a matter of semantics: it also conditions the secure strategy of the State in an island where the economy appears more and more vascularized by dirty money.
Minister of Local Authorities, responsible by Emmanuel Macron with a delicate negotiation mission for a possible autonomy of Corsica, Mr. Darmanin does not forget to style his cap of the police to support this process Institutional, by announcing a “very important” strengthening of the means of the State in Corsica against organized crime and “drug trafficking, extremely present in the island, much more in proportion than on the continental territory”.
In the space of a few years, after a clear delay in the ignition of police and gendarmerie services often focused on the fight against terrorism, the question of drug trafficking has ended up asking with acuity, and operations Antidrogue are now multiplying on the island.
As if to echo the ministerial observation, a long investigation, conducted by the research section of the gendarmerie and the interministerial research group of Corsica, allowed, on June 20, the dismantling of drug trafficking between Ajaccio and Propriano (Corsica-du-Sud): seventeen charges, ten incarcerated people, a seizure of 100,000 euros in cash and twelve kilos of drugs-half cocaine, half cannabis-, without counting an Ajaccian establishment placed under seal . On the level of Corsica: a “good affair” whose estimated profit, for traffickers, exceeded 3 million euros according to the survey services.
In February, the judicial police also uncovered a Moroccan cannabis import network from Spain. But such successes say, in hollow, the extent of the phenomenon, quite relative when compared to the data recorded at the national level, considerable reported to the local population. And the public authorities are now concerned about the high risk of money laundering through investments in construction and tourism, the two pillars of the Corsican economy. To counter this threat, increased resources should be allocated to the control services of the two prefectures of the island, particularly in terms of town planning and public procurement, under the gaze of the specialized interregional jurisdiction of Marseille, at point in the files of crime organized on the island.
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