His name probably doesn’t ring a bell. But Joël Soudron was named by the French police in December as his most wanted fugitive as part of the traditional campaign “Most Wanted From Europol. Originally from Guadeloupe, this 42-year-old Frenchman is “an international drug trafficker of very high standards”, summed up with 20 minutes an official of the BNRF (National Fugitive Search Brigade), a judicial police service launched on his heels since September 2018. Sentenced to six years in prison in 2004, he is also suspected of being involved in a vast trafficking of importation of cocaine into France from the West Indies.
The police have had it in their sights since 2011. At the time, customs discovered in a container arrived in Le Havre 230 kilos of white powder shipped from Guadeloupe. Entering the facts, the Octris [Office central pour la répression du trafic illicite des stupéfiants] – since become Ofast [Office anti-stupéfiants] – updates the network of traffickers who organized the shipment of the drug, who received and unloaded it once it arrived in metropolitan France. During a search, they get their hands on 278 kilos of additional cocaine and a little over 280,000 euros in cash.
Exit permit
The organizer of this traffic is identified. Investigators suspect Joël Soudron of having orchestrated some thirty cocaine shipments between 2005 and 2011. “He is extremely mobile,” sums up a BNRF police officer. He sails extensively between the French Antilles, the British Antilles, French-speaking Africa and Europe using various identities. He was finally arrested in February 2016 while he was in Bamako, Mali. Handed over to the French authorities, he was then imprisoned to serve a six-year prison sentence pronounced in 2004 by the court of Créteil (Val-de-Marne) which tried him in another drug trafficking case.
In September 2018, when an investigating judge was preparing to indict him in the cocaine case seized in Le Havre, he was granted leave. Probably fearing to be heavily condemned once again, he did not return to Réau prison. Since then, he has been actively sought by the judicial police. “It is difficult to locate, underlines this police officer of the BNRF. He has a rather atypical profile: he is very discreet, unlike other traffickers of the same caliber, he does not seek to be ostentatious or to stage his domination over trafficking. “
Many relays in Africa
BNRF police suspect him of being in Africa, Senegal or Guinea, where Joël Soudron has invested in many legal companies, in construction or real estate, and where he benefits from important contacts. They hope that information, which can be transmitted anonymously via the Europol site, will enable them to find and arrest him.
Last January, they put an end to the runaway of François di Pasquali, a 48-year-old Franco-Italian who had been convicted of the rape of an octogenarian in Saint-Etienne (Loire) in 2009. Information had just happened to them allowed to locate near Barcelona in Spain this man also put in the spotlight within the framework of the campaign “Most Wanted” of Europol.