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"The commission of such acts required a lot of manpower, both during the action and during the preparatory acts"
.
The comment slipped by the head of the BRB investigation in apotheosis of his very dense testimony before the Rhône Assize Court, this Thursday, came to summarize the months of judicial investigations necessary to trace the meticulous organization of the robbery of Chavornay.
This locality in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland had been the scene of a resounding armed robbery of a van transporting 25 million euros in 2018. One of the conveyors, Yusuf F., compared until April 5 on the dock - as well as two other individuals -, while his colleague is a civil party with his daughter.
It is already dark when the latter returns to her apartment in the 6th arrondissement of Lyon after work on February 8, 2018. On the way, she receives a call from a person posing as a plumber, who explains to her that she is waiting for her in front of her home. , where he was sent by the management to take care of his pipe problems.
Arrived at the bottom of her building, she opens to this man of about thirty years, rather small, dark eyes.
And walks with him into his apartment unsuspectingly.
She had been contacted two days earlier by an alleged plumber.
After a quick tour of the apartment, to make sure it is empty, the latter sends a colleague up.
The taller, younger man comes to the door with a hooded face.
The criminals who had obtained the young woman's address a few days earlier, pretending to be a Chronopost delivery man, tied her to her bed and explained that they were angry at the van that her father was transporting to Switzerland at the same time.
The tracking seems to have been methodical, according to the investigation of the judicial police of Lyon, which detected the presence of the mobile phone of one of the accused, several times in the district shortly before the facts.
This is Mehdi B., suspected of kidnapping, who will be arrested near a box containing a stolen car and an empty rocket launcher tube, a few months later.
Kalashnikovs, Porsche 4X4s and foreign currency
Gagged, the daughter of the conveyor is transported outside her building in a garbage container, which will be loaded into a utility with the probable assistance of a third man.
The vehicle takes the direction of the east of the agglomeration, towards the nearby Lyon countryside and the department of Ain, in the Miribel sector.
At the same time, the father is getting ready to return to Geneva, completing his tour in the company of Yusuf K., a colleague with whom he has already worked four or five times.
A tour that took them to several banking establishments across Switzerland, as far as Zurich, to deposit and recover cash.
His phone rings, displaying a call from his daughter.
Once, then a second.
He ends up dropping out.
On the other side of the wire, he hears his daughter in tears explaining the situation to him on the loudspeaker.
The criminals deliver many details about his family, his colleagues and his home, going so far as to mention this bundle of wood placed in front of the garage.
Yusuf K. then asks his colleague not to activate the alarm while his interlocutors order him to divert the van towards the Chavornay exit, of the A1 motorway, bound for a carpool parking lot.
There, three other criminals are waiting for the van, armed with Kalashnikovs around a Porsche brand 4X4, according to the Swiss investigation.
Methodical preparation
The vehicle was stolen in September 2017 in Geneva.
It was kept there in a box in Lyon and used very little before being transported to the Swiss border three days before the incident.
It is equipped with plates stolen the day before in a border locality.
It is in this vehicle that the contents of the van unloaded by the conveyors were stored, held at gunpoint by the criminals who take care not to get into the van so as not to leave any DNA traces.
They ask the father of the family to wait 30 minutes to contact his daughter and his power station, in order to give them time to flee.
At the same time, the girl is released into the wild near Mas Riller, after being forced to wash her hands with bleach, to prevent DNA traces from her jailers from being found.
The criminals observe this same caution even in the Porsche 4X4 which rushes towards Lyon, keeping their balaclava on while they are flashed on the highway, preceded by a Clio belonging to the mother of the alleged mastermind, Mehdi A.. Only grain of sand in this beautiful mechanics: the trace of the Porsche will be found in Chassieu before being driven by the second of the team Mektoub M. to Irigny, in a camp of travelers of La Mouche, where it would have been boned.
As for the money, it is packaged and stored with at least one nanny, Pascal G., a childhood acquaintance of Mehdi A. with whom he grew up in the Grappinière district, in Vaulx-en-Velin.
Frightened and attracted by the money promised in exchange for keeping a padlocked military canteen, the contents of which he claims not to know, he agrees to
However, it is the unreasonable sums that will derail the plan.
Pascal G. is thus the victim of an attack at home by the entourage of Mehdi A., who would have come to get the money in vain, according to the police.
An anonymous call to the police will follow, made by Mektoub M. himself (whose voice is recognized by the policeman), revealing the location of the cache.
The police will find 2.5 million under the garage, in foreign currencies, from around twenty countries, from American or Australian dollars to Thai bahts or Czech crowns.
There is no doubt about the origin of the funds, the bracelets on the bundles mention the bank UBS for example and date from February 5 to 8.
However, no other robbery was reported in the first half of 2018. The DNA of the brain, Mehdi A., and his second, Mektoub M. are found on the plastic bags containing the money.
Anonymous information and serial settling of accounts
The second, in great financial difficulty, will even go so far as to call back the investigators to try to monetize new information on caches.
He will end up being kidnapped, sequestered for two days and violently molested.
Rolled up in a tarp, he will even be taken into the woods and thrown into a dug hole, where a bullet is fired right next to his head.
The man sees himself dying and leaves the region for the south.
The settling of scores continues.
By anonymous letters first, to avert suspicion.
Then by sword, with an ambush that will cost the life of Mehdi B.'s brother, then the murder of another of his brothers, as well as the sixth suspect in this case, close to Mehdi A., also killed on the landing of his parents with several bullets in the head.
Only three men out of the six referred to in the investigation therefore remain in the accused's box.
The mastermind believed to be on the run is actually imprisoned in Tunisia.
It is his criminal base which would have allowed this resounding robbery thanks to the information provided on the convoy.
The Swiss investigators evoke 17 preparatory meetings for as many months after the connection of Yusuf K., and Mehdi A.. It is a friend met in a Geneva fitness club and a sulphurous luxury car rental company from Geneva who would have played intermediaries, according to the latter, sentenced in Switzerland last July.
Swiss security breaches had been identified at the end of the 2010s by several Lyon teams, with
"a big period, from 2017-2019, with six robberies"
, according to the Swiss head of investigation, one of which was to be tried at the start. year in Lyon already.
Information in reality at earshot as the poor security conditions in Swiss convoys were widely known.