They will be no less than 28 to be called to the bar this Wednesday, for what is one of the most anticipated trials of the year. For more than a month, the Marseille criminal court will try to dissect the well-oiled operation of what was, at the time of its dismantling, one of the largest cocaine trafficking raging between France, Colombia and the United States. ‘Italy. A file made famous by a peculiarity: the means of communication used by traffickers, who, in the age of smartphones and social networks, used… the Tatoo messaging service, in vogue at the end of the last century. 20 minutes comes back to this affair and the stakes of this trial which is about to begin.
What are the facts ?
In May 2014, after two years of investigation, the authorities announced that they had dismantled a sprawling international traffic in Colombian cocaine which was supplying multiple networks in France and Italy. The investigators got their hands on all the links in this illegal chain, from the Colombian drug trafficker to the little “mules” of the Alpes-Maritimes. Nearly 88 kg of cocaine are seized, and 150 in total would have been imported by this network, according to estimates by the police.
“The updated organization was considered to be one of the most important teams operating in Paris and the Paris region, involved in the importation and distribution of narcotics to, in particular, various cities in the Paris suburbs, can we read in the order for reference. The investigations would demonstrate its national and international scope. In this vast network for which 28 people are appearing from this Wednesday before the Marseille Criminal Court, everyone had their role, from the head of the bow to the small hand, passing through the negotiator and the commercial. In the order for reference, the magistrates thus note the existence of “a particularly structured import network”, with “several starting points” distributed between Caracas, the Dominican Republic and Peru. The traffic relied in particular on an individual based in Cannes and who often went to Latin America to liaise with drug traffickers, negotiate prices and organize the departure of suitcases.
Indeed, the network relied on accomplice “teams of baggage handlers” in several airports, none of which could be identified by the investigators, and who always acted according to the same modus operandi. In Latin America, on regular flights to Paris and mainly from Lima, Caracas and Punta Cana, these baggage handlers replaced one or two passenger suitcases with 20 to 36 kg suitcases filled with cocaine. Once the plane was at Roissy airport, the real passenger’s suitcase was declared lost, while the goods were received by other French baggage handlers, accomplices, before customs. After recovering the cocaine from these baggage handlers, the traffickers could count on an important “distribution network”. A chain of resellers flooded the Paris region, another the Marseille region, two were active in the Alpes-Maritimes, and a last operated in Italy.
To sell the goods, the network also employed “many henchmen who had to transport cocaine and/or money. The dealers in the south of France indeed sent transporters to collect the drugs in Paris, but the Italians came to get their supplies directly from the capital.
At the end of the chain were “structures managing traffic money”. These structures were “responsible for sending money to Spain or South America by means of money orders in order to remunerate the intermediaries or to make an advance on future imports”. They could also be used to “hide the flows generated by the resale of narcotics”.
How did they communicate?
Such an organization requires an important and discreet exchange of information. And in this respect, the members of this network have, to say the least, demonstrated inventiveness. In fact, in the age of cellphones, these traffickers preferred to communicate with each other… via Tatoo. This ancestor of the smartphone for sending short messages was very popular in the 1990s, before falling into disuse. But the traffickers had apparently not forgotten this object from another century and saw in it a means of thwarting the surveillance of the police.
“The members were particularly suspicious and organized in their conversations, can we read in the order for reference. The identification of a network of Tatoo lines made it possible to understand that these boxes served as a fixed base for their contacts and as a landing for the regular changes of portable lines, to provide the numbers of telephone booths used for their occult conversations. The traffickers used coded language to designate their activities. Thus, the suitcases were referred to in the messages as “tables”. If they were surrounded by plastic, the traffickers took care to specify that there was “a raincoat”.
Who are the members of this network?
At the head of this organized network are three brothers, the Seraf, settled in the Val-de-Marne, and who led the high life. Kamel, the youngest of the siblings, now 49, lived at the time of the events in a 300 m² villa with a swimming pool in Yerres, in Essonne, as a couple with the daughter of a figure in the southern suburbs of Paris. . During the search of their home, investigators from the narcotics brigade and the Nice research and intervention brigade (BRI) got their hands on €36,000 in cash and two handguns. The eldest, Abdenasser, now 53, had made “several trips” with his companion, and resided “in luxury hotels like the Majestic”. He was also the owner of several luxury watches. According to the order for reference, the third, Abdelkrim, had also made several trips to New York, Deauville and Egypt with his wife, who held a fictitious job. Trips billed in the name of their 8-year-old daughter, “confirming their desire to hide their lifestyle”.
“Kamel Seraf was totally associated with his two brothers in the management of the negotiations, of the relations with the members of the team, proving to be totally interchangeable, indicates the order for reference. Some of the lines listened to were used indifferently by the three brothers, which was to make it possible to monitor scheduled shipments of cocaine, to ensure the movement of the teams of baggage handlers, to ensure the delivery of narcotics to their customers. All three accused of money laundering, drug trafficking and criminal association, they risk ten years in prison.
Alongside them, several people are already known to the police for similar facts, like “wholesalers whose judicial notoriety was well established”, as indicated in the order for reference. One of them indeed belonged to the “Alps gang”, a band involved in particular in extortion cases, and has already been convicted in a drug trafficking case. “My client has understood and has not moved an ear since 2013, underlines Me Joseph Cohen-Sabban, who defends one of the alleged henchmen in this network. He doesn’t have custody. Nothing. “My client has a very small record and they deny the facts, launches Me Thierry Ospital. We are very calm and I will plead for release. “There is a mixture of genres in this trial, concludes Me Chehid Selmi. On the one hand, there are people like my client, a perfectly integrated business leader, who finds himself alongside others in this major file. The trial is scheduled to last until December 7.