To prevent the Isle of Beauty from becoming “a hub for drugs in the Mediterranean”. Traveling to Corsica, this Friday, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced “the strengthening of judicial means” in Corsica, Marseille and Paris to fight against organized crime.
“I asked to strengthen the judicial means on the island of Beauty, in Marseille, which is the place where the major criminal investigations are carried out, but also in Paris”, declared the minister to the media at the end. a meeting with magistrates, police officers and gendarmes at the Bastia police station.
“Many more investigators, judicial police officers”
“For the start of the school year in September, […] reinforcements will be there and we are going to put many more investigators, judicial police officers to serve the magistrates, ”he added.
The court of Marseille houses the Specialized interregional court which handles serious crime investigations over a large part of the French Mediterranean region, including Corsica. The minister welcomed the fact that “three settling of accounts” had been avoided since the start of the year and also pointed to “the evolution of crime, particularly with regard to narcotics”.
“An increase in drug trafficking”
“We can clearly see that the main difficulty, because the Island of Beauty was not used to this, is an increase in drug trafficking […] “Involving Corsican but also external criminal elements, he pointed out.
Evoking an “atomization of crime, he insisted on the fact that” organized crime in Corsica is not the same as in other cities of the Mediterranean, not the same as in Sicily, Sardinia or in the other cities of the continent” and that it “does not necessarily have to be photocopied from the systems of other countries and other territories”.
Concerning a “possible institutional evolution which could go towards the autonomy” of the island, with reinforced delocalized powers, Gerald Darmanin specified: It cannot take place if “we do not have reinforced means of control of the State” to prevent “access to this crime to these new skills”.