The investigation lasted 18 months on both sides of the Alps.
It started in the Var, with the banal arrest of a conveyor who was transporting cannabis resin to Italy.
Investigators from the Draguignan research brigade, then from the Marseilles research section, managed to trace this delivery back to the sponsor of this delivery.
He is a trafficker established on the Côte d'Azur, who is in contact with known members of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta.
It was the launch of a vast Franco-Italian operation to dismantle an international drug trafficking network.
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The crackdown on Tuesday, September 15, mobilized an impressive device: 450 gendarmes and 120 riflemen.
But the results are there since 34 people were arrested in France (7 in the Paris region, the rest in the south) and 13 in Italy.
Weapons were seized from the multiple homes searched as well as a kilo of cocaine equivalent to 820,000 euros, around thirty luxury watches and six high-end cars.
Outstanding cooperation
Beyond these figures which will enrich the statistics requested by the new Minister of the Interior, a remarkable aspect of this case is the cooperation and coordination between the French and Italian justice and police services.
For three years, Italy has authorized the establishment of the
"joint investigation team"
.
"This means that we can track individuals on either side of the borders without having to wait for authorizations"
, explains Colonel Dominique Lambert, commander of the Marseille research section, having authority over the entire southern region. .
“At the time of the intervention, the coordination of operations guaranteed their success.
To avoid alerting the members of the network, we acted simultaneously in the Paris region, in several southern departments and, on the Italian side, in Liguria ”
.
Most of the men arrested have a heavy criminal record.
Adapted legislation in Italy
On the justice side, collaboration between the prosecution also makes it possible to be effective.
"We are working together, together on the same legal procedures,"
confirms the prosecutor of the Republic of Marseille, Dominique Laurens.
Nothing is simple when we know, for example, that the investigating magistrate of the specialized interregional jurisdiction (JIRS) in charge of this file, Valéry Muller, for example had to process no less than 13,000 procedural documents.
Another advantage of this type of exceptional collaboration between European countries, the suspects will be distributed between the different jurisdictions according to the crimes and the places where they were committed.
But since it is a network linked to the mafia, the Italian justice has more appropriate legislation.
The mafia association is a heavily sanctioned offense there, which does not exist in French criminal legislation.
