Stronger than the virus, there is cocaine.
The second drug market in France, after cannabis, has been able to adapt to containment measures linked to the pandemic.
According to our information, in 2020, nearly a ton of white powder was seized by customs at Orly airport (Val-de-Marne) through which narcotic products from the overseas departments transit. .
Last week, in Guadeloupe, 25 people working in particular in the nightlife scene were arrested during an operation led by OFAST (Anti-Narcotic Office) and the local Research Section.
Eleven of them, suspected of belonging to a vast network of international trafficking in particular to the metropolis, were to be brought to justice.
This investigation of several months had in particular made it possible to get hold of 219 kilos of cocaine in the cargo area at Orly last December.
"The traffic knows how to adapt", observes an investigator
In total over the year, the quantity seized at Orly fell by 30% compared to 2019. Same decrease for the number of “mules” stopped.
These men and women, most often destitute, are paid 2,000 to 10,000 euros to transport cocaine, whether in luggage, on oneself or inside oneself.
Have drug traffickers significantly lowered their targets?
Not really.
Because if we compare this 30% drop in the cocaine seized to that in the number of passengers received, we realize that it is not at all proportional.
According to Aéroports de Paris, 10.8 million travelers set foot in Orly in 2020, 66% less than the year before.
A little more than 60% for the thefts coming from the supervised places.
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If the number of passengers collapsed in 2020, it is already because in April, May and June, the airport was completely closed.
During a whole part of the year, it was also necessary to present a certificate or a negative test to have the right to fly to the metropolis.
The first consequence of the spectacular drop in the number of travelers: the evolution of the so-called “saturation” technique used since around 2017 by drug traffickers.
The principle was simple.
We put as many mules as possible on a plane.
If customs stopped 3 or 4 - for the busiest days - it was impossible to check more suspects.
Higher amounts of cocaine per smuggler
If it was very effective for traffickers with a plane full of 300 passengers, the technique is much riskier since last year when there are far fewer travelers.
However, there is no question of no longer using mules at all on the pretext that they may be arrested much more often.
Suddenly, we have less on board but we charge more.
In 2019, the average amount of cocaine seized from a mule was 1.9 kilograms.
In 2020, she was 2.5 kilos.
The soldier from Guyana, who killed himself in December while in custody in Orly, was arrested by customs with 4 kilos on him.
“Some mules hide 10 to 15 kilos in their luggage,” notes an investigator.
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According to our information, the police of the SDPJ 94, seized for the smugglers arrested with less than two kilos of cocaine, investigated in 2020 on 90 mules against 160 in 2019. That year, the metropolis was so overwhelmed that local thugs were coming. "Steal" the mules arriving at Orly.
Two teams had thus been dismantled by the same police service.
A phenomenon that completely disappeared in 2020.
"Perhaps the fight against drug trafficking is also bearing fruit," says a legal source.
In 2019, in Créteil (the competent court for Orly) and in Cayenne in Guyana, the public prosecutor had promised to be more “firm” in his requisitions during the trials.
“At the hearing, to impose a sentence, we often start from the base of a kilo of cocaine transported for a firm year, before adapting ourselves according to a possible recurrence, the personal situation of the defendants and the 'attitude to the hearing', a magistrate confides in us.
The mules of the Antilles more numerous than before and better integrated socially
In 2020, as soon as the airlines resumed, the traffickers first tried to smuggle more drugs.
"There was an indisputable catch-up effect", analyzes the Orly customs department.
As there were fewer flights from Guyana, the department through which the most cocaine transits, the traffickers played the West Indies card more.
In Guadeloupe and Martinique, the profile of mules differs.
She is already older.
"Undoubtedly the slice above the Guyanese smugglers who are very often less than 30 years old," believes the customs department.
The mule from the West Indies is also more socially integrated.
"There are young revelers who just want to take a 2000 or 3000 euro banknote," describes an investigator.
"" The smuggler who tries his luck with cocaine
in corpore
runs enormous risks for health, underlines a customs officer.
This profile of a desperate mule can only be found from Guyana.
"
Freight increasingly used by traffickers
To compensate, traffickers have also relied more on postal and express freight, continuing to use the saturation technique but concealing the drugs in goods rather than passengers.
Seizures of freight increased by nearly 20% in 2020.
"We take it into account more," says an investigator.
The fight against drugs implies anyway an adaptation to the techniques used by thugs.
But it is not only repression that can lead to a decrease in traffic.
"
