William Molinié // Photo credit: NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP
Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, announced on Friday the creation of an interministerial research group for the police and the gendarmerie, the GIR. A device to fight more effectively against money laundering from drug trafficking.
This tool makes it possible to attack the wallet of traffickers head-on. And Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, announced on Friday that he would soon be deployed to Nîmes where a 10-year-old child and an 18-year-old man were recently killed in a neighborhood plagued by drug trafficking. The interministerial research groups, the GIRs, were set up by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2002. They are made up of gendarmes, police officers, customs officers, tax officials or Urssaf. A tight team of about ten civil servants per branch.
Targeting to peel the heritage of dealers
Their job is to target the assets of local dealers by going through their account statements or their tax returns. Everything that could be bought thanks to the money generated by drug trafficking interests them: cars, yachts, villas, paintings, luxury watches, investments abroad.
Tax evasion and money laundering are also in the sights of these investigators specializing in the underground economy that plagues neighborhoods. Each year, the GIRs seize several million euros in criminal assets, part of which is then transferred to the State budget to fight organized crime more effectively.