Figure of the Rouen PS, head of the PS-EELV list for the 2021 regionals, the mayor of Canteleu, Mélanie Boulanger has been indicted for complicity in drug trafficking, while continuing to claim her innocence.
“The mayor and his deputy were indicted on charges of complicity, transport, acquisition, possession, unauthorized offer or transfer of narcotics”, respectively on April 22 and 21, said Bobigny deputy prosecutor Anne-Laure on Monday. Mestrallet. “They were placed under judicial supervision.” The magistrate thus confirmed information from the daily Paris-Normandy and the Norman media Octopus.
Mélanie Boulanger and her deputy were taken into police custody on October 8, 2021 during an anti-narcotics raid, then released the next day.
19 police custody last October
Questioned on Monday, Arnaud de Saint Rémy, Mélanie Boulanger’s lawyer, reaffirmed that his client was innocent. “We want to use all the rights that will be available to Mélanie Boulanger to demonstrate her innocence,” he said.
On October 8, a total of nineteen people were taken into police custody as part of a judicial investigation opened in September 2019 for drug trafficking and criminal association and led by a judge from Bobigny. Five days later, the Bobigny prosecutor’s office announced the indictment of eleven people.
During a press conference on October 11, Mélanie Boulanger said she had “no connection” with the drug traffickers of her town, of which she has been mayor since 2014. “I know that I am irreproachable”, assured the elected socialist, also vice-president of the Metropolis of Rouen.
Intimidation charges
“They tried several times to get in touch with me through an intermediary. I am an elected official. They call me, I answer. They obviously never called me themselves, ”explained the mayor, now 45 years old.
According to her, these traffickers contacted her to try “to impress her, to intimidate her, to dissuade her from leading the fight” against delinquency, during the installation of CCTV cameras or when she requested additional resources. “Threatened once more seriously”, Mélanie Boulanger had even said that she had asked “the prefectural authorities”, with a view to possible protection, in vain according to her.
In the viewfinder “for several years”
In October, a source familiar with the matter indicated that in this case, “a very large network of drug traffickers has been dismantled”.
“We are talking about a historic family in Canteleu. People in the sights of the police for several years”, added this source, affirming that “this family very strongly influenced the local political world in Canteleu”.