The drug trafficking file in Aurec-sur-Loire, judged Monday afternoon, finally deflated. Arrived detained and under escort at the bar, Haykel Belhadj was mainly prosecuted for having run a cannabis and cocaine business from April 2021 to February 2022 and for having engaged in the laundering of his proceeds by transiting part of the money, in order to conceal its origin, on the account of a friend exercising the profession of barber in the town centre.
Traffic in the center of town
Having decided to leave Aurec to settle in Firminy where he is both temporary and engages in the used car trade, the 27-year-old man is not unknown to the courts: his record mentions five convictions, including one to six months in prison in February 2020 for having participated in another drug trafficking in the town. This conviction earned him to appear as a repeat offender.
It all started in April 2021 at HLM Les Roses when the gendarmes were looking for a motorcycle whose pilot was suspected of doing urban rodeos. If the soldiers find the two-wheeler in a squatted cellar, they also get their hands on a bag containing 150 grams of cannabis packaged in bars of soap and strips. Fingerprints found on it allow them to go back to unfavorably known young people meeting in front of the business run by the barber opposite the town hall. The implementation of video surveillance will highlight transactions near the establishment. The investigation will also establish exchanges on the Snapchat application and wiretaps designate the defendant as the conductor of this traffic.
A “poorly done” procedure, according to the defense
” It’s wrong. I don’t sell drugs and I don’t launder money. Before, it’s true that I went to prison for drugs and for violence… I assume. The gendarmes know it and they want my skin, ”defends the person concerned. Behind him, Me Philippe Cizeron (bar of Saint-Étienne) drives the point home by denouncing a procedure “poorly done where all the investigations were not carried out. Has he been seen selling narcotics? No… In addition, several of the protagonists have not been prosecuted, they have not even been heard”, explains the lawyer, describing his client as a man with a lifestyle that does not correspond to that of a drug dealer. “He is forced to combine two jobs. Gambler, he entrusted his money to his barber friend or he went into sports betting. »
The court seems to have been sensitive to the arguments of the defence: trafficking is reclassified as simple consumption of narcotics and money laundering as a fraudulent insolvency organization in order to avoid paying the fines of its previous convictions. Also found guilty of contempt, Haykel Belhadj was sentenced to eighteen months in prison with continued detention. The lawsuits for money laundering against his barber friend are also revised downwards: he receives a ten-month suspended sentence.
We mention the names of people sentenced from six months in prison or eighteen months suspended sentence.