Nursing assistants from a center for disabled people, a nursing home employee, a physiotherapist and even the boss of a company specializing in Covid-19 disinfection. Here is a sample of some 140 “beneficiaries” of the traffic of “true-false health passes” for which 17 people, including 14 “buyers”, have been placed in police custody since Wednesday by the research brigade of the Muret gendarmerie, near Toulouse.
Who gave the alert?
It all started on October 6 when members of the medical staff at the Muret vaccination center noticed anomalies in the registration of patients. “Thus several names appeared on the list of patients vaccinated for the day, while the practitioners who carried out the vaccinations did not remember them”, explains Samuel Vuelta Simon, the public prosecutor of Toulouse, in a press release. After verifications, it also appeared that the batches of vaccines appearing in the files of these patients, who did not live in the area, did not correspond to those used in the center. In fact, the people to whom the famous passes were issued never received an injection.
Who are the alleged organizers of this trafficking?
It was by cross-checking the times at which the suspect names had been recorded in the computer system that the investigators went back to “an operator” at the center. Aged 19, she is currently considered the instigator of trafficking. This is also the case of a friend of hers, of the same age, suspected of having promoted real-false sesames on Snapchat. The investigations established that the two alleged accomplices were reselling the passes “between 100 and 380 euros room “.
And “the investigation is now continuing under the direction of the investigating judge with a view to identifying the other authors, co-perpetrators or accomplices in trafficking and all of the beneficiaries”, specifies the prosecutor.
What legal consequences?
The two main suspects were brought before the judge on Friday morning with a view to their indictment for “fraud by a person in charge of a public service mission and complicity in fraud”. The prosecution requested their placement in pre-trial detention.
The 14 professional beneficiaries who were able to be heard in particular “for deliberately endangering the life of others” will also be prosecuted, assures the public prosecutor. “With particular attention given to those who have bypassed the vaccine obligation because of their employment in the health sector,” he adds.