On May 5, the French authorities got their hands on an unusual shipment from Colombia: 22 tons of sugar mixed with cocaine. Eighteen people suspected of having taken part in this international traffic were arrested last week in several countries, the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday.
Ten suspects were arrested in France. Seven Colombian nationals, suspected of being “chemists” responsible for extracting cocaine from sugar, were in Spain while another man was intercepted in Dubai.
It all started in June 2021 with an investigation opened by the Nice public prosecutor’s office into suspicions of alleged short-time working fraud in the context of the pandemic. The Ministry of Labor had alerted the courts to “a company that does not appear to have any activity” and yet has received compensation of 124,000 euros, specifies Bercy.
Also contraband tobacco
Seized by the Nice public prosecutor’s office, the Finance judicial investigation service revealed “that this fraud was the act of a criminal organization […] in the context of tobacco and drug smuggling activities”.
Faced with the scale of the fraud and its international ramifications, the investigations were resumed in February by the national court responsible for the fight against organized crime and three investigating judges from the Paris court.
The investigators also discovered that this criminal organization was behind “the import of 12 t of tobacco seized by the Belgian authorities in August 2021, 600 kg of cocaine seized in September 2021 in the port of Cartagena by the authorities Colombian companies as well as the laundering of several million euros”, according to Bercy.