This Thursday, at the Brest judicial court, the criminal hearing was almost exclusively devoted to a case of aggravated thefts committed in the departments of Finistère and Côtes-d’Armor, between January 1 and May 1, 2023. Three Georgian nationals, aged 31 to 35, in pre-trial detention since May 17, 2023, were thus to answer for twenty-three gang thefts of catalytic converters perpetrated solely on Toyota vehicles, due to the presence of “rare metals”.
Arrested on May 13, 2023, in Rennes, the defendants were in possession of large sums of money, 2,310 euros for one, 1,000 euros for another and 4,900 euros for the third. Since the start of the proceedings, two defendants have chosen to remain silent, with only one of them agreeing to explain himself. At the hearing, the three men maintained this position. The fact remains that the investigation had demonstrated the involvement of each, in particular by geolocating their telephone lines at the scene of the offenses in various Breton cities and identifying their vehicles.
At the end of the debates chaired by Xavier Jublin, Givi Kokhiashvili, Beka Tsertsvade and Irakli Tsertssvase, with no known criminal record in France, were sentenced to two years in prison, one of which was suspended, with a ban on appearing for five years in the departments where the offences were committed.
