In September 2020, the restaurant L’Uniq’Brasserie, in Saint-Laurent-du-Var (Alpes-Maritimes), was ravaged by flames. The fire had even spread to three other establishments. Two years later, four people were indicted and imprisoned for this fire against a backdrop of fraud and extortion in an organized gang, according to the director of the Nice PJ, confirming information from Nice morning.
Suspected of having sponsored the operation, two of the four men imprisoned last week are suspected of “criminal conspiracy to commit a crime, extortion in an organized gang and destruction by fire in an organized gang”. “Suspected of belonging to the Corso-Nice community”, these forty-somethings are “well known to the police and the justice system”, said Florent Mion. The other two individuals, in their twenties, were indicted for “destruction by fire in an organized gang”.
“The day they refused to pay, in the summer of 2020, their establishment burned down”
“At the beginning, the investigation related to a simple insurance scam”, recalled the director of the PJ when the brewery had been bought, through a “complex” financial arrangement, by a couple of Parisians “who did not had no catering experience. “The buyers had to pay undue sums and the day they refused to pay, in the summer of 2020, their establishment burned down, he explained. The former owners returned to the charge after the buyers received the insurance money. »
Last week, eleven people were arrested, ten men and one woman, in the Alpes-Maritimes, Haute-Corse, Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône. Seven were released. During the searches, documents were seized as well as a “Glock automatic pistol with the number filed down”, said Florent Mion.