Two investigating judges from Bobigny on Friday ordered the referral to the criminal court of the PS mayor of Canteleu (Seine-Maritime) Mélanie Boulanger and one of her deputies for complicity in drug trafficking. The judges followed the requisitions of the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office which had requested their dismissal at the end of December, as well as that of 17 other people suspected of being involved in vast drug trafficking in this town near Rouen, according to a source close to the case confirming a information from Norman media Le Poulpe. The trial date has not been specified.
According to the referral order, consulted by AFP, Mélanie Boulanger is accused of being complicit in the unauthorized acquisition, transfer or transport of narcotics between September 2019 and October 2021. She is suspected of having given information to traffickers about police checks, delaying the installation of video surveillance cameras, which she has always denied. His deputy Hasbi Colak, in charge of economic development, is being prosecuted in particular for having informed the traffickers about police checks or for having made his company vehicle available to them, and will be judged for the same facts.
The double game of the chosen one?
The case began in 2019, with the arrest in Seine-Saint-Denis of a man linked to a family from Canteleu, the Mezianis, at the heart of the case. A judicial investigation is then opened for drug trafficking and criminal conspiracy and led by a judge from Bobigny. Two years later, in October 2021, Mélanie Boulanger and her deputy were placed in police custody during an anti-narcotics raid, then released the next day.
The elected official had claimed to have “no link” with the drug traffickers in her Normandy town of 14,000 inhabitants located in the northern suburbs of Rouen, of which she has been mayor since 2014. According to her, they contacted her to try “to impress her, intimidate her, dissuade her from leading the fight against delinquency. But the elected official has, according to the order of reference, never filed a complaint for the threats she says she received.
The judges evoke a double game by Mélanie Boulanger, who publicly displayed a desire to fight against drug trafficking, but whose decisions were guided by the traffickers with whom she was in direct contact. According to this document, Mélanie Boulanger, for example, demanded accountability from a commissioner for a police operation which had inconvenienced members of the Meziani siblings.