Two men were indicted on Thursday in Paris in the investigation, underway since May 2022, relating to a corruption network dismantled within the Meaux-Chauconin prison (Seine-et-Marne), the prosecution said on Friday from Paris, confirming information from France Info.
These two men are being prosecuted for complicity in trial fraud by an organized gang and for active corruption of a person responsible for a public service mission – all as repeat legal offenders. They were also indicted for criminal conspiracy to commit a punishable offense carrying 10 years of imprisonment. One was imprisoned, the other placed under judicial supervision, again according to the Paris prosecutor's office. According to France Info, they are around thirty years old and presented as possible intermediaries.
With these two new indictments, the number of suspects rises to eight in this case illustrating the growing risk “of corruption within our own institutions linked to organized crime”, as expressed by the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, at the time of the first arrests in December 2023.
The alert was given in May 2022
Last year, six people, two of whom worked at the Meaux penitentiary center, were indicted for active and passive corruption by and on a person entrusted with a public service mission, organized gang fraud in judgment, embezzlement of the purpose of files, criminal association with a view to crimes punishable by ten years of imprisonment.
In May 2022, the specialized interregional jurisdiction (JIRS) of Paris charged the Paris gendarmerie with investigations, after the discovery of several suspicious consultations and modifications of files within the Meaux penitentiary center. “Surrenders or attempted releases, attributable to the non-transmission of requests within procedural deadlines” have also raised the alarm, indicated Laure Beccuau, public prosecutor, last year.
Drug traffickers among the beneficiaries
Among them, a prison administration clerk who is suspected of having, during the year 2021 at Meaux prison, modified criminal files and of not having transmitted requests, which would have had the consequence of bring down committal warrants, two sources close to the case told AFP in December 2023.
The clerk would have been approached by detainees in order to get them out, first as a joke, then would have been threatened and intimidated into carrying out their requests, said a source close to the investigation. The beneficiaries or potential beneficiaries, also indicted, are three drug traffickers, “high profiles”, including one of the most important in France, according to a source close to the case.
