Estonian jewelry store robbers sentenced to sentences higher than requisitions by the criminal court of Haute-Corse

At the end of four days of trial, the departmental criminal court of Haute-Corse sentenced the four robbers who robbed the Danesi and Vannucci jewelry stores to prison sentences ranging from 7 to 15 years.

The attorney general had asked for 5 years in prison for Vitali Guk, it will be 7 years.

For Roland André Marjamaa, the requisitions were 7 years, the court sentenced him to 10 years.

Concerning Marek Viidemann, absent and without a lawyer to represent him, the public prosecutor asked for 10 years in prison, it will be 13 years.

Finally, Riivo Nugis, suspected of being the organizer of the robberies, the sentence requested by the attorney general was 13 years. The criminal court, after more than two hours of deliberations, chose to sentence him to 15 years.

The first two are banned from French territory for a period of 10 years, the last two permanently. Finally, everyone is banned from possessing weapons for a period of 5 years.

“Panic”, “shock”, “nightmare”, “chaos”, “uproar”, “crash”, “theater of horror”. A few hours earlier, during the pleadings of the civil partiesthe words were strong, and wanted to transcribe the confusion and fear which reigned during the two robberies committed in Bastia in October 2016 in the Vannucci jewelry store, and in May 2017 in the Danesi jewelry store.

“We are not talking about a bank card scam. We are talking about a theft, in a jewelry store, with a context of ultraviolence.” recalled Maître Lia Simoni.

For Maître Sophie Perreimond, « wounds of the soul“, from which the people who were in the jewelry stores at the time of the armed robberies suffered were « invisible wounds, much deeper and more difficult to heal than physical wounds ».

Maître Laurence Gaertner of Rocca Serra recalled the words of his client, a cleaning lady who should not have worked that day, and who was nevertheless present on the scene: « I didn't know if I was dead or alive ».

Maître Jean-Pierre Poletti returned to the profile of the robbers, and affirmed that « Debts, bad company, gambling or drug addictions are not sufficient grounds for organizing raids across Europe. ».

The Erasmus of crime

The lawyer was referring to the numerous robberies carried out across the continent by the Estonian gang, which Maître Simoni described a few minutes earlier as« Erasmus du crime ».

Maître Poletti hit the nail on the head: « they are real professionals, to whom we place orders, who participate in a mafia organization. And who display total mastery and confidence ».

For Master Valérie Vincenti, « they chose to satisfy their greed, not pay debts. It's a criminal lifestyle choice. A deliberate choice. They chose not to follow the rules to the detriment of us, the citizens ».

Maître Cyril Offenbach, the last lawyer to speak on behalf of the civil parties, concluded: « we must send a strong message to the Corsican population. We don't tolerate this kind of thing. ! » And for that, he waited for the court to take a “firm decision”. “This will perhaps be the start of reconstruction for the victims.”

The accused having admitted the facts, the defense, unsurprisingly, focused on the personality of the latter, on their exact role in the organization of the robberies, and on the possible mitigating circumstances that could be found in them.

Maître Bianca Laetitia Tomasi, lawyer for Vitali Guk, painted the portrait of a man « with a bumpy, difficult journey, in a chaotic family pattern »but who, after years of drug addiction and crimes, increased his efforts to get out of it. “His integration was successful, thanks to the care, the work, the family he found.”

Maître Claire Mathieu, counsel for Roland André Marjamaa, believed that his client had fallen « in a grinding machine that crushes the victims but also those who are used to do the dirty work. He has had time, since these robberies, to take a step back, to think about his actions, and his personality makes us think that he will never find himself in such a courtyard again. ».

You have to have the intellectual honesty to admit that you have no idea about everything that happened in Estonia

Master Morgane de Peretti

The lawyer for Riivo Nugis, Maître Morgane de Peretti, for her part focused her defense on the « gaps » of the file. “During this trial, a lot of names of people in Estonia were mentioned. But we didn't launch a particular investigation, we stuck with what we had at hand. You have to have the intellectual honesty to admit that you have no idea about everything that happened in Estonia.”

For the lawyer, her client was an ideal culprit, while there was no « no proof that Mr. Nugis took care of anything other than logistics ».

While the court gave the floor one last time to the accused, who once again presented their apologies to the victims of the robberies, Niivo Nugis was more talkative than during the previous hearing days.

“Don’t see me as an entirely bad person. There is good in me. Etry to forgive me, please.”

The court, which was significantly more severe than the public prosecutor for the four accused, was apparently not convinced by the mea culpa of the three Estonians (the fourth, Marek Viidemann, was tried in his absence).

Trial of the Estonian robbery gang, day 1: “a gun is pointed at me, one meter away. I see my life passing by, and I pray that I can come out unscathed”

Trial of the Estonian robbery gang, day 2: “I cannot answer you. I would endanger myself or my family”