Six people were indicted, two of them imprisoned, Wednesday and Thursday in Bordeaux, after the dismantling of a network mainly dealing with cigarette trafficking, but also pimping, between France and Bulgaria, announced Friday 4 December the gendarmerie.
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The six Bulgarians referred, five men and a woman aged between 21 and 70, were indicted for criminal conspiracy, importation and contraband possession and organized gang of manufactured tobacco, fraudulent retail sale in organized gangs of manufactured tobacco.
One of the suspects was also indicted for money laundering, organized gang concealment and aggravated pimping.
Another person was arrested in Bulgaria on a European arrest warrant.
The deferments follow a large-scale operation, with some 150 gendarmes and judicial customs officers engaged, launched on Monday simultaneously in France (Bordeaux and Moissac in Tarn-et-Garonne) and in Bulgaria, on the occasion of a new smuggling of tobacco.
It led to eleven arrests in total, including several in a camp located in a disused hangar in Bordeaux, made available by the town hall following the recent evacuation of a squat.
The operation, said the gendarmerie, was the culmination of an investigation lasting several months, started in February 2019, with the monitoring by the gendarmerie of a Bulgarian involved in the concealment of burglar objects in the Landes.
The investigations had revealed the routing by the suspect, from Bulgaria, of young women who prostituted themselves in Bordeaux, and facts of contraband cigarettes.
The profit from this smuggling is estimated between 200,000 and 400,000 euros.
Some 90,000 euros in cash, eight vehicles and 650 cartons of cigarettes were also seized, as were to be several real estate in Bulgaria, investments by which the funds were laundered.