"It is the trial of misery in misery", summarizes Alexandre Martin, lawyer of five defendants in an extraordinary case judged this Monday in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) for ten days.
Eighteen people of Bulgarian nationality, aged between 21 and 62, are due to appear before the criminal court for “trafficking in human beings, criminal conspiracy and money laundering”.
A trial relocated to the Jean-Mermoz municipal hall to accommodate the defendants, their lawyers and interpreters, while respecting health measures.
These Bulgarians, belonging to five families, are being prosecuted for having forced, from December 2015 to June 2018, other Bulgarians, including a 7-year-old child, to beg at the crossroads and red lights of the Pink City, under penalty of violent reprisals. .
To have them, in other words, reduced to the status of street slaves.
60 to 150 euros collected per day
In May 2017, a man breaks the law of silence.
A first beggar files a complaint with the police of the Departmental Security, explaining that he is under the control of one of his compatriots who had brought him to France in February 2016 to practice begging and share the money with him.
Once in the Pink City, he had his identity papers confiscated by the leaders of this well-organized network, who physically brutalized him to force him to go to his place of begging, at the Lasbordes exit, on the Toulouse ring road.
If he brought in less than 30 euros a day, he was beaten with a stick.
In total, 33 beggars who were victims of this network were identified by investigators.
The leaders of the network and their victims all lived in the camp on Chemin de Gabardie, near Balma-Gramont, east of Toulouse.
It was after more than a year of investigation that eleven people were arrested in this slum in June 2018 by the police of the criminal and repression of attacks against people (BCRAP).
Seven other suspects were subsequently arrested in Bulgaria.
The heads of the network recruited their future workforce from local families in Bulgaria, inviting them to go to France to ask for charity from passers-by, and promising them substantial gains.
“Each traffic manager managed about eight beggars, who collected between 60 and 150 euros per day at their red lights and crossroads, with eleven identified begging places, underlines the order of reference.
The money collected was then transferred to Bulgaria.
Telephone surveillance made it possible to establish the existence of a structured organization where beggars were goods exchanged between families for 500 euros.
Those responsible for trafficking led beggars with terror, assaulting them to assert their authority and deter them from fleeing or rebelling.
They called beggars regularly during the day by telephone to check their work and to count the sums collected ”.
They were displayed behind the wheel of beautiful cars in Bulgaria
During the hearings of the victims, the investigators discovered the "sordid" treatment inflicted by the chiefs, the victims receiving stab wounds and electric cables.
Structured around five family clans, each month they sent tens of thousands of euros to Bulgaria via Toulouse agencies or during road trips.
During searches in the barracks of the Gabardie camp, investigators found several thousand euros in cash, rolls of packaging of coins and several account books with the names of the victims and the amount they collected.
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The police officers also noted that those responsible for this trafficking displayed themselves behind the wheel of beautiful cars in Bulgaria and displayed wads of banknotes on their Facebook pages.
The heads of networks claim to be beggars themselves and ensure that the money comes from prostitution, the sale of pallets and scrap metal.
The families involved, often having family ties between them, reject the accusations of forced begging.
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“Some of my clients admit to having shared begging with others but it remains the trial of misery at all levels, underlines Alexandre Martin, lawyer of a family presented as managing this network.
In this camp, there were no people who lived in luxury and others in poverty.
They dispute everything.
The debates at the hearing will be far from contradictory since no victim is a civil party for this trial ”.
The thirty victims returned in 2018 to Bulgaria.
The defendants face up to ten years in prison.