Trafficking in counterfeit cigarettes has just been dismantled by the police from the La Courneuve police station.
Investigators got hold of 25,000 packages imported from China, via Belgium, and made four arrests on July 5 and 13.
Tried this Thursday in the criminal court, the man considered to be the organizer of the traffic was sentenced to two years in prison, including six months suspended.
He was jailed afterward.
His accomplice was sentenced to spend nine months with an electronic bracelet.
The customer who came to collect the cigarettes to provide them to street vendors in the Quatre-Routes district in La Courneuve will be tried in April 2022. Finally, the proceedings against the owner of the car which was used to import cigarettes from Belgium was dismissed.
"Thanks to anonymous information, we were able to go back to the boxes where the goods were stored" in Gonesse (Val-d'Oise) and Pierrefitte, indicates a police source.
“We have set up surveillance to observe the comings and goings from Belgium.
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The cartridges of cigarettes made in China were then resold, at a unit price of 10 euros, to customers who supplied the sellers of contraband tobacco nicknamed "Marlboro Bled".
The Quatre-Routes district where they officiate has been part of the so-called “republican reconquest district” for a year.
"In this context, we do daily work around street vendors but we also investigate in depth to go back to the source," explains the same police source.
We had never gone to type so high.
This is the first time that international traffic has been characterized.
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