Organized crime is a world of silence. And when it mixes with a Corsican accent, the rule is reinforced by a theorem: "acqua in bocca". Water in your mouth, the one that prevents you from speaking. In their book "Vendetta", to be published this Thursday, June 11, the two journalists, Violette Lazard, of "l'Obs", and Marion Galland, of France Bleu Corse, shatter this theorem. And it obviously does not please everyone, especially those who reject the term "godfather" but who do not intend to see the back room of the island rogue exposed in the window.
Rarely, Jean-Luc Germani, 54, who is currently serving a prison sentence at the Arles power station (Bouches-du-Rhône), has chosen to take legal action. Two lawyers have seized in his name the Paris judicial court of a summons from hour to hour, targeting the editions Plon, which must be examined this Wednesday. The aim is clear and summarized in the summons to which "the Parisian" - "Today in France" had access: "prohibit the distribution in the state of the work" and "cancel the contentious remarks".
A fire on the practices of the sea breeze
And "contentious words", there are almost in each of the 277 pages of this archi-documented work where family affairs collide with court cases, where blood calls blood. In this cemetery, Jean-Luc Germani is a survivor. A heavyweight too. In any case designated as such. An entire chapter is dedicated to him - number 23 - under the title "sworn and untouchable enemy".
For years, this robber by trade, is suspected of having pushed on the ruins of the famous and terrible Sea Breeze. Incarcerated since 2014 after a cavalry which led him to Africa, Germani does not seem to have anything to do with business. The famous chapter 23 which he wishes to be removed from the book includes in particular the account of part of his life in detention. The reader discovers there that a prisoner having the status of “particularly watched prisoner” can receive visitors in his cell, prisoners also, even when those belong to other Corsican clans.
Microphones hidden in the prison walls
The story is all the more detailed because it is based on listening inside the cell he occupied in 2015 at the Baumettes in Marseille. Germani didn't know it, but under the new paint, the police had placed microphones.
For Germani, these are "prisoners' words". And for his lawyers, a “concealment of violation of the secrecy of the instruction” and an “attack on the respect of private life” - since a prison cell is considered as a “private home - which deserve the prohibition of diffusion of a work. Its defenders go even further, evoking the "disastrous consequences" for a man who "fears for his life". And enemies, Jean-Luc Germani has many. As many as men who tremble at the mention of his name.
It is now up to the court to decide whether wiretaps carried out in prison, taken out of an investigation file and published in a book can lead to its prohibition or partial censorship. Beyond the legal debate, the revelations contained in “Vendetta” lay on paper terrible truths: that of the grip of certain criminal clans on the economy of Corsica, that of those stirring and stubborn hatreds that make and will inevitably shed blood. Some do not want this dark unpacking. Silence has long been their best refuge.
"Vendetta, the heirs of the Sea Breeze", by Violette Lazard and Marion Galland, Ed. Plon, 20 euros. Released Thursday June 11.
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