Toyota RAV4, DS 7 crossback, Peugeot 5008 ... A vast international traffic of high-end vehicles between the Paris region and the African continent has just been dismantled by investigators from the brigade for the repression of banditry (BRB) of the judicial police of Paris.
According to police and judicial sources, seven suspects aged 17 to 49 were indicted on November 6 and 19 for "organized robbery", "concealment" and "criminal conspiracy in preparation for a crime ”by an examining magistrate from Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine).
Four were imprisoned.
Police from the BRB Stolen Vehicle Trafficking Group estimated that the group stole 58 luxury cars between May 5 and November 2 for argus damage of more than 1.6 million euros .
Most of these are new SUVs stolen in the middle of the street or in residential areas throughout Île-de-France: Paris XVIe, Val-de-Marne, Seine-Saint-Denis, Yvelines, Seine-et -Marne ... After scouting during the day, the thieves took action in the middle of the night and started the vehicles using falsified electronic keys or by plugging a smartphone into the OBD socket (
Editor's note: diagnostic socket located in the interior of most vehicles which allows access to all kinds of information
).
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Among the suspects is a RATP foreman hitherto unknown to the justice system.
This 49-year-old man of Comorian origin is suspected of having provided the network with the site of a sub-contracting company of the railway company, specializing in signaling panels, in Antony (Hauts-de-Seine ).
The stolen vehicles were thus loaded on this vast area, out of sight, in containers.
It is also the intense activity on the site on weekends, when they are closed days, which attracted the attention of the neighborhood and then of the BRB investigators.
Surveillance made it possible to materialize the loads which then left by boat from the ports of Le Havre (Seine-Maritime) or Antwerp (Belgium) to various African countries: Côte d'Ivoire, Togo, Mali, Senegal or Guinea.
These top-of-the-range SUVs are highly sought after by the emerging wealthy classes and new export prices can explode.
"To be of service to the great"
Small hands, including a minor, had been recruited by the network, led by a 25-year-old man of Malian origin, to… suspend vehicles via chains around the wheels and thus optimize the places in the containers by storing three cars instead of two.
"These are young boys, with a smooth course, who simply came across the wrong people at the wrong time," assures their lawyer Mourad Battikh.
They weren't even paid for these tasks, and did that, as they often do, to help the grown-
ups
.
We must not neglect the sociological dimension of this affair.
"
The police discovered a second place of luxury vehicle loading stock in a pavilion in Val-de-Marne.
It was run by a 32-year-old Frenchman who also smuggled cannabis - which led to incidental proceedings entrusted to the Paris PJ's narcotics squad.
Of all the stolen vehicles, investigators managed to intercept 34 before their transport to Africa.
