From last July to this month of February, forty-three people had already been arrested by the police and more than 5,000 packets of cigarettes had been seized.
A scale more than sufficient to put the departmental security service on the case.
Cigarette trafficking had therefore been rampant for several months at Melun station, with sometimes aggressive sellers.
At the manoeuvre, groups of six to eight men take care of the sale, from 5:20 am when the station opens, until late at night, some of Algerian origin, others of Pakistani origin.
The first officiating in front of the station, the others in the neighboring tunnel, with sometimes fights between the two groups.
Despite a slew of arrests from the national police, the inter-municipal municipal police and even the transport police, this street sale has continued.
A first procedure opened in July, nevertheless made it possible to target two main protagonists and a third working as a supplier by bringing back the goods from Belgium.
The latter was also arrested in the middle of the night, in October, with a hundred cartons of cigarettes that he was bringing back from overseas.
Undocumented squatters
Once on the case, the men of the Departmental Security, by means of surveillance, worked on the group of men of Algerian origin, the most present on the scene of the sale.
They established that a good part of them were undocumented and that they were squatting in a building in the Mail Gaillardon, in Melun, which was being evacuated and some windows of which had already begun to be walled up.
It was last Wednesday that officials from the Sûreté, the Melun police station and the inter-municipal municipal police took action.
About thirty suspects were thus arrested, including the two main protagonists, eight street vendors and two minors.
The next day, it was the supplier's turn to end up in custody again.
In all, eleven of them were brought before the Melun court.
Of the three main ones, one was released.
The other two were placed under judicial control, with a ban on appearing at the station.
They will stand trial on March 11 before the criminal court.
Among the sellers, six are summoned on March 29 before the judges to be the subject of a penal order.
Among them, four are undocumented.
An obligation to leave French territory was pronounced against them.
Finally, the two minors received a reminder of the law.
