Five men will appear from Wednesday before the Lyon Assize Court in a robbery case in Switzerland, punctuated by multiple incredible twists and deadly repercussions.
Aged 30 to 48, they are accused of having participated to varying degrees in the attack on a cash transport van on February 8, 2018, which resulted in a total loot of 25 million francs. Swiss.
The team of criminals from the Lyon region is also suspected of having organized, at the same time, the kidnapping of the daughter of the driver of the armored van, in order to force him to open the vehicle.
The penalties incurred range from ten years' imprisonment to life imprisonment.
Evidence
Among the accused is Yusuf K, 31, a background security guard suspected of having informed the criminals of the route of the vehicle.
What he denied.
He was present in the van the evening of the robbery, alongside the driver.
Suspicions fell on him when he confessed to having hidden a box containing 605,000 Swiss francs, left behind by the robbers.
For the investigators, this curious oversight would have been the reward for his complicity.
Described in the indictment of the investigating judge as "
the main organizer of this robbery
", Mehdi A, 42, is on the run.
He flew to Thailand a few days after the incident.
Following an anonymous call, the investigators had found part of the loot in a trunk buried in a garage located in Trévoux (Ain).
The owner of the garage, sent back to the assizes, affirms that his role was limited to providing a cache at the request of a friend.
This made it possible to take DNA traces from tools and bags of banknotes containing a total of 2.5 million Swiss francs.
Mehdi B, 31, another defendant prosecuted for criminal association for his alleged exchanges with the main protagonists, is indicted in another case of theft of gold bars in January 2021.
One of the most significant episodes of banditry in Lyon
For the investigating judge, the case is one of the most significant episodes of banditry in Lyon.
"
The sequence of events during the attack on the van reveals a meticulous organization and thought out in detail, with coordination of the various teams requiring meticulous scouting for long months both in France and in Switzerland", writes judge
Michel Walnut.
Led on the French side by the central office for the fight against organized crime (OCLCO) and the inter-regional direction of the judicial police of Lyon (DIPJ), the investigation had a substantial Swiss component, revealing the contacts of criminals from Lyon, for through a luxury car rental company in Geneva.
According to these investigations, mentioned in the Lyon file, certain protagonists of the team would have planned a previous attack, in Daillens (Switzerland) in January 2017, in similar circumstances, with the same conveyor suspected of complicity.
Gray areas
"
This case has not revealed all its secrets and gray areas remain
", notes the investigating judge in his order for referral to the assizes, stressing that this robbery with very high booty "
obviously caused, as soon as committed, very strong tensions in the criminal circles of Lyon and Geneva
".
A sixth defendant should have appeared at the assizes, but he was murdered in April 2021. Two other settling of accounts perpetrated in the Lyon region, fatal to the brothers of an accused, are directly linked to this case, estimates the judicial police.
The trial is due to end on April 7.
