Six men aged 18 to 46 appeared Thursday afternoon before the Puy-en-Velay criminal court, for facts relating to the use and trafficking of narcotics in Brioude. Prevention covered a period from November 2023 to October 2024.
The affair began last June. The gendarmes of the Brioude research brigade learn that one of their “acquaintances”, after having been convicted, persists in criminal activities. Telephone tapping made it possible to identify five other individuals directly or indirectly involved in drug trafficking: mainly cocaine and cannabis. Significant and recurring banking transactions among at least two suspects tend to confirm the investigators' suspicions.
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In addition, the investigations made it possible to get their hands on narcotics, but also a total of more than 10,000 euros. Better still, one of the defendants in this case is suspected of managing his trafficking from the prison where he is incarcerated in the Rhône, via a Snapchat account (and therefore a phone connected to the internet). Another indicates that he earned between 3,000 and 4,000 euros per month through his traffic for six months, when his legal activity as a self-employed person earned him an average of 600 euros over the same time.
On the stand, the defendants are not very talkative. They barely manage to understand the questions asked… One gets angry with the president or discusses during the instruction. The other gets reprimanded for his hands in his pockets. The spectacle is not very impressive and the public prosecutor's office is getting annoyed. Prison sentences ranging from six years to two years, including one year suspended, were required, not to mention fines of 5,000 to 3,000 euros. At the start of the hearing, one of the six defendants saw his case separated from the procedure. He will be judged later. The judgment was reserved.
