Illegal Sahrawi workers in the vineyards of Armagnac and Jurançon: five people were taken into custody Tuesday morning during an operation carried out in Landes and Gers, we learned from the Police in borders (PAF).
One of them, a 55-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin arrested in Eauze (Gers), is suspected of having set up a network of illegal agricultural workers.
He brought young men aged 20 to 30 from Western Sahara to employ them in pruning vines in several estates in Landes and Gers.
Thirty-four people, housed in unsanitary apartments and cellars of a building in Gabarret (Landes), according to the findings of the PAF, were checked.
Three of them, arrested with false papers, were placed in police custody.
Five others, in an irregular situation, are subject to administrative detention.
A second man, a Landais man in his fifties, owner of some of the apartments, is also in police custody.
Investigation
The Office for Combating Illicit Trafficking of Migrants of the PAF of Hendaye, contacted for nine months and associated in the investigation with the Mutualité sociale agricole (MSA) and the Labor Inspectorate, mentions more than 10,000 hours of hidden work since 2020, for a loss of more than 85,000 euros for the MSA.
The investigation began after the interception, by Spanish police, of a package of false documents coming from Turkey and destined for a company in the Landes, managed by the man whom investigators describe as the head of the network. , already known for similar facts.
The operation carried out on Tuesday morning mobilized 80 people: police and gendarmerie personnel, Spanish police officers, representatives of the MSA, the Labor Inspectorate, the tax department and the Regional Health Agency.
The investigation, carried out by the Bayonne public prosecutor's office, will also lead to hearings from the wine farms which used these workers.