Stop for grandpa drug dealers.
Monday evening, the Paris criminal court sentenced Makondele and Kekume, both aged 64, to 2 years in prison with continued detention.
They were being prosecuted for having been involved in a drug trafficking case in a hairdressing salon located near the Château-Landon metro station in the 10th arrondissement of the capital.
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The case began at the end of October 2023 with anonymous information provided to the police.
They are told that Kekume sells drugs in this establishment where they don't just deal with hair.
“It’s a place to live,” note the investigators.
While only a few people are having their hair done, around fifteen others chat, have a drink, and sell exotic products.
The police are struggling to set up surveillance and cannot see for themselves that there are indeed transactions.
They move on to the Kekume file: the sixty-year-old is already known to the courts for similar acts and was convicted for the first time in 2001. His last sentence dates back to 2016.
Investigators are tracking him.
He made 13 trips to Belgium, taking care to avoid monitored modes of transport.
The TER rather than the TGV, illegal taxis.
The police become certain that these trips allow him to return to Paris with the product.
He will be arrested at the beginning of December with 384 g of heroin.
On the stand as in his hearings, he admits to a few trips to pick up drugs, but not the resale.
The president of the court tells him: “It’s the same, you play a role in trafficking.”
Money?
The sale of scrap metal collected in the streets of Paris
Above all, he places the responsibility on Makondele, the other defendant who was more of a nanny since the investigators discovered 450 g of ecstasy, 100 g of heroin, and cocaine at his home.
On his accounts, traces of 20 cash payments for 8,000 euros in total.
Where does this money come from?
“Every weekend, I collected scrap metal in Paris which I resold in Ivry,” he says, without really convincing me.
I kept the drugs at home but I didn’t make any money on them.”
The criminal record of this father of two children is 30 years of delinquency between 1985 and 2015… Including five convictions for drug cases.
He calmed down after the birth of his youngest 10 years ago.
The two defendants say they are vague acquaintances, knowing nothing about each other.
Was one acting under the orders of the other?
The investigation did not make it possible to establish this.
The link between the two could be Makondele's uncle, who is friends with Kekume.
They won't say more.
The prosecution had requested 4 years in prison against them.
Which shocked Makondele’s lawyer who worked to portray “a little gentleman”.
And to raise the shortcomings of the investigation: no investigations in the hairdressing salon, no testimony, no fingerprint analyzes on the products... Kekume's lawyer stressed that his client has always maintained the same version.
They therefore receive the same sentence.