French drug trafficker Gilles Tepie, sentenced in France to 18 years in prison, was arrested in Venezuela on information provided by France, the Venezuelan army announced on Monday.
Acting on
“information provided by the French authorities”
, the army “succeeded in the capture in the state of Carabobo (north) of a French citizen,
Interpol
red notice
for international drug trafficking”
, according to the press release. broadcast on X by General Domingo Hernandez Larez, head of the Strategic Operational Command.
The tweet is accompanied by a photo of
“Tepie Gilles Hervé”
with the words
“Captured”
, his passport number and the words
“Interpol red code for international drug trafficking”
.
The text specifies that a Venezuelan accomplice was also arrested.
Gilles Tepie was sentenced in May 2014 to 18 years in prison by the Paris Criminal Court.
He was one of the central figures in drug trafficking dismantled in 2010 during the seizure in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) of 111 kg of cocaine, imported from Venezuela.
Several convictions
At the time of his conviction, Gilles Tepie, a repeat offender, was already incarcerated in Venezuela, sentenced to sixteen years in prison also for drug trafficking.
He was arrested in Caracas in April 2011. A year later, the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) of Venezuela declared that it was appropriate to extradite him to France, but postponed the extradition to an unspecified date. because he first had to go through legal proceedings in Venezuela.
It is currently unclear why he was at large again.
Gilles Tepie was convicted in France at the same time as Yannick Dacheville, a figure in organized crime.
The investigation into Yannick Dacheville was at the origin of the scandal surrounding the former Lyon anti-gang commissioner Michel Neyret, convicted of corruption.