The debates are expected to last a week and a half as the number of defendants is so large. From this Wednesday, 33 people will be tried in Lyon for money laundering. Eight years earlier, they had presented themselves, one by one, to the management of the high court in order to raise the tidy sum of 500,000 euros. This was the amount of the bail set to free Mehdi Boulenouane, one of the figures of drug trafficking in Grenoble.
Everyone came to deposit part of the amount in 500 euro notes. Tickets which “were wet”, according to David Metaxas, lawyer for Boulenouane. The cuts had been stamped with alcohol the same day in order to “erase all traces”.
Sentenced to ten years in prison
If the Lyon public prosecutor’s office could not oppose the release of the trafficker, it immediately opened an investigation to find out the origin of this money. And appealed.
Arrested again two months after his release, Mehdi Boulenouane was returned to pre-trial detention. In September 2016, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for drug trafficking and money laundering.