No more photos of cannabis loaves or kilos of cocaine displayed for the media on a table at the police station, following the dismantling of a narcotics sales network. In a “paradigm shift” assumed, the fight against narcobanditry will go more and more often through money, promises the Marseille prosecutor’s office. “How do the sums come out of the city? Where are they going? The desire of the trafficker who, at certain large points of sale can earn up to 150,000 euros per month, is to reinject this money as quickly as possible. We have therefore chosen to move our sensors to financial flows and not only to those of products”explains Damien Martinelli, assistant prosecutor in charge of the organized crime division.
The development of this line of inquiry, which goes hand in hand with the creation of a group of the judicial police specializing in the laundering of drug trafficking, is justified by the importance of the drug market in Marseilles. At the judicial court, the proportion of activity related to narcotics (18.78% of total cases) is twice as high as the national average, representing in particular 36% of immediate appearances and 44% of referrals for appearance on prior recognition of guilt.
As an illustration of these new investigative directions, a crackdown involving 156 police officers led, at the end of May, to the provisional detention of seven of the eight men indicted for money laundering, in particular drug trafficking. Among them: a leasing broker who has been in business for thirty-two years and construction business owners, all based in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) and owners of sumptuous villas.
Cash and false invoices
The investigation conducted by an investigating judge from the interregional jurisdiction specializing in economic and financial matters seems to have uncovered complex interconnected money laundering circuits. Already, the prosecution assesses the amount of funds likely to have been laundered since 2017 at 45 million euros, part of which comes from drug trafficking.
In one part of this survey, four companies managed by three brothers, some of them fictitious, the others having a share of real activity, would have provided contractors with cash and false invoices in exchange for transfers made for fictitious services, such as the rental of construction machinery, trucks, rock breakers, excavators… Cash that can be used, for their part, to pay for undeclared work.
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