The "new Lyonnais gang" in court for a spectacular robbery

While the Lyon Assize Court is just closing the Axelle Dorier file, it is the biggest case of banditry in recent years that will open on the desks of the jurors on Monday.

Heard over ten days, the trial of this team of six alleged robbers, sometimes nicknamed the "new gang of Lyonnais", should indeed open a window on the environment.

And on the series of spectacular robberies that took place in the 2010s in Switzerland, and sometimes carried out with the support of information on the route and the security systems of vans circulating at night.

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The six accused, from the Lyon region, were arrested in a villa near Annecy (Haute-Savoie) a few hours after the night attack on a cash transport van, between Geneva and Lausanne, May 24, 2017 The six men had been arrested in possession of the loot, consisting of banknotes of different currencies piled up in bags, four gold bars, as well as several thousand precious stones, for a total value estimated at more than 40 million Swiss francs (about 40.3 million euros).

Aged between 33 and 51, most of the defendants are already known to the courts.

They are judged in particular for “theft in an organized gang with a weapon” and “kidnapping and kidnapping” of the two conveyors of funds, for this attack carried out with assault rifles.

In the act

Two of them were previously sentenced in Geneva in 2013 to five and seven years' imprisonment for "robbery".

A third has already been sentenced for similar acts in France.

These arrests in flagrante delicto had represented a great success for the research and intervention brigade (BRI) of the Lyon judicial police, which had been able to locate the team of criminals shortly after the robbery.

Cross-checks had made it possible to detect the presence of the suspects in France a few hours after the attack on the van of the Loomis company, in the canton of Vaud.

Thanks to several months of surveillance, the anti-gang brigade had indeed identified several boxes, and especially a villa that could serve as a fallback base, in Chavanod, near Annecy.

In addition to the loot, several weapons were found on the spot, including five assault rifles and various accessories used for the robbery.

DNA fingerprints of several suspects were found on the seized items.

Initially scheduled for November 2021, this trial had been postponed, one of the defendants having contracted Covid and the Rhône Assize Court considering it "

.