This could be season 2 of TheWire, the series created by David Simon, broadcast on OCS more than twenty years ago. Similar setting: the port of Le Havre (Seine-Maritime) instead of that of Baltimore (on the east coast near Washington). Stacks of containers laid out in mazes in the middle of which only a few initiates manage to orient themselves, between docks where giant freighters are moored that no less giant cranes unload and load day and night. Crooks from the surrounding estates placed on wiretaps, dockers lured by profit, cocaine arriving in quintals hidden in containers of various goods. In this case where reality merges with fiction, six men will appear from January 30 before the Assize Court of the North, in Douai.
The story begins in January 2017. The judicial police of Le Havre are alerted that a vast international traffic of cocaine passes through the port. The goods landed at the port come from South America. The individuals who receive it are known to the courts. They have already been convicted of cannabis and heroin trafficking in the early 2010s. Local guys with the classic profile of delinquents, regulars in the same bar where, between two days of boredom, you find yourself embroiled in some bad trick .
Added to these are the dockworkers – real sesames without whom it is impossible to access the port – sometimes prey to more or less temporary financial difficulties. The latter frequent from time to time the same bars as the former. For some, there are loans to repay, houses and cars to pay for, pensions to honor and bankruptcies pending. For others, trafficking is a visa for flambe, designer clothes, women, luxury stays under the sun in Thailand or elsewhere… Everyone dreams of easy money, of the jackpot. This one is counted in millions of euros.
From South America where it is produced, cocaine can be bought for around 1,000 euros per kilo. On arrival in Europe, the “wholesaler” sells the same kilo at a price of around 30,000 euros. Between the two, each actor is remunerated. Depending on the role played in the transaction and the place occupied within this criminal organization, the sums pocketed vary from a few thousand to several hundred thousand euros. Everyone is affected: the port employee who informs of the arrival of a boat, the one who facilitates the handling of a container, its movement, its opening, the truck driver who takes the drugs out of the port enclosure, the crook who acts as the intermediary with the sponsor who will put the product on the market, and still others, small or big hands hired to ensure the success of the company.
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