“The convergence of interests between criminal organizations and the customs hierarchy has led to the diversion of procedures in a purely statistical interest. » This is one of the conclusions of the judicial investigation carried out for nearly four years under the leadership of the Parisian investigating judge Aude Buresi, who lifted the veil on the abuses of the National Directorate of Intelligence and Customs Investigations. (DNRED), whose former boss, Jean-Paul Garcia, and five executives appear, Monday, May 9 and for one month, before the Paris court.
Returned for importing in an organized gang counterfeit goods, fraud, forgery and use of forgeries, passive corruption or embezzlement of public funds, they are suspected of having organized from scratch imports of counterfeit coffee for the sole purpose of making beautiful seizures, this in connection with an adviser (an indicator in customs language) appearing on the blacklist of the central office of sources, who continued in parallel a traffic of cigarettes without being worried. Operations qualified as “completely artificial” by the investigating magistrates and which, by almost everyone’s admission, have never led to the dismantling of any network.
Provision of a shed
It all started in the summer of 2015 when this flagship customs service seized 43 tonnes of counterfeit coffee from the L’Or brand, from Maison du Café. Very quickly, several elements suggest that the DNRED played an important role in the logistics – the provision of a storage shed in particular – which allowed the arrival of the goods. More embarrassing, the role of a certain Zoran Petrovic, a former Serbian soldier removed from the central source office and also implicated in another procedure for drug trafficking, appears central in the importation of counterfeit coffee. He is expected, too, on the bench of the defendants.
Faced with the possibility of a questioning of the customs officers, the gendarmes were seized of the case in September 2016. Their investigations will bring to light how the DNRED has freed itself from all the rules in force in the management of advisers in the sole purpose of asserting valuable figures of seizures, to the point that magistrates now believe that the traffic was created from scratch. Magalie Noël, then Deputy Director of Customs Operations, admitted during her hearings that she now had “real doubts” on the existence of a criminal organization at the origin of these imports, claiming to have blindly trusted its leaders.
You have 58.35% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
–
