This Friday, the prosecution requested two years, one of which is closed, against a Meusian suspected of being the network head of a lucrative trafficking in stuffed protected species. Two collectors also appeared, including a Mosellan. Deliberated on Wednesday.
Eric Nicolas – Yesterday at 6:46 p.m. | updated yesterday at 7:47 p.m.
It is 8:30 a.m. this Friday morning at the Nancy Criminal Court and the magistrates, while waiting for the hearing to begin, cannot help but take a photo of the lion. Yes, in the room, near the detainees’ box, a life-size stuffed lion… In front of President Nicolas’s office, also stuffed, a gray heron, a barn owl, a spectacled caiman and a barbary macaque, but also hippopotamus tusks measuring around sixty centimeters and shark teeth. A real Prévert-style inventory, epilogue to this affair of trafficking in stuffed animals, skulls and bones.
The Vosges business manager bought this lion for €4,000. Photo Eric Nicolas
Natacha Rollot, public prosecutor, well surrounded. Photo Eric Nicolas
The gray heron. Photo Eric Nicolas
Shark teeth. Photo Eric Nicolas
The spectacled caiman. Photo Eric Nicolas
More than two hundred animals seized from this Vosges business manager. Photo DR
Trophies and skulls at the home of this Moselle architect. A true cabinet of curiosities. Photo DR
It all started with a vast search carried out last March by the OCLAESP (Central Office for Combating Attacks on the Environment and Public Health) and the OFB (French Office for Biodiversity). Nineteen arrests throughout the territory and searches which are akin to visits to a natural history museum, to visits to cabinets of curiosities. And, among these collectors who violate the legislation on the acquisition and possession of protected species, Frédéric, a 54-year-old from Meus, suspected by the courts of being the main organizer of this vast traffic.
“He was my exclusive seller”
Pierre, a 48-year-old business manager from Vosges, bought several animals, including the famous lion, for €4,000, and a yellow-backed duiker (Editor’s note: a kind of gazelle), “for €800”. He thought that the papers of the king of the savannah, presented by Régnier, were in order. “For the second, I didn’t check, I trusted him”
He is also accused of the unjustified acquisition or detention of around fifteen other animals. The gray heron which watches over the public prosecutor but also a spectacled caiman or even a star tortoise from Madagascar. “These are animals that I acquired around twenty years ago. In flea markets, at a time when we found a lot of them. We can see it clearly, by looking at them, they are old taxidermies” Yes, but which still require proof that they were acquired before the ratification by France in 1978 of the Washington Convention on international trade animals.
“I have known this seller since 2019,” continues Pierre. “I then bought him an antelope on the Natura Buy site. He was my exclusive seller, in fact I bought a total of 15 to 17 animals from him, for an amount of €8,000 to €9,000. »
“- It’s still strange, isn’t it, this passion for dead animals? », asks President Nicolas.
“-I grew up with a father who took me into nature when I was very little. The first fifteen years of my life, I spent going to see birds, animals, fish, mushrooms.”
Very technical debates
A Moselle architect, Vincent has a morbid fascination for the skulls that he finds, according to him, on the sides of the roads. He also traded several times with Frédéric. Because the latter certainly works in fish farming, but generously supplements his income with the trade in stuffed animals, bones, skulls and fossils. It sources its supplies from Africa (Cameroon, Tanzania and South Africa) but also from Canada, France and the Netherlands. “I buy and sell. On eBay or Natura Buy. I admit that I made mistakes. For lack of knowledge but there are so many species…”.
Long as a day without bread, the debates this Friday are technical, too technical. Frédéric, the main defendant, and the OFB agent battle hard. It talks about CITES, annexes A, certificates, CE regulations… Lawyer for the LPO and the Association for the Protection of Wild Animals, Me Riou underlines that animal trafficking is the third after drugs and weapons and brings in 23 billion euros per year. For prosecutor Natacha Rollot, who spent the day next to a magnificent “hawksbill turtle”, Frédéric “is the central character of this traffic”. She is asking for two years, one of which will be suspended, as well as a ban on selling animals for five years. For the two collectors, defended by Me Morel, the magistrate requires a twelve-month suspended sentence, a fine of €5,000 and the confiscation of the seals. Me Grandhaye, for Frédéric, recognizes that his client is not in trouble “for around ten animals, no more”. Deliberated on Wednesday.
#Lorraine #Vast #trafficking #stuffed #protected #species #Mosellan #court
