The new Minister of Justice, who is due to visit Baumettes this Thursday, spoke of a “confiscation of ill-gotten gains” from traffickers. He also announced that he wanted to improve judicial cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, where he is expected to visit in January.
A financial sanction for drug traffickers. This is one of the new avenues explored by the Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, visiting Marseille this Thursday, January 2, to fight against drug trafficking, which he wants to make a priority. “You have to hit your wallet”declared the minister to journalists, following interviews at the Marseille judicial court, affirming that “prison sentences are not completely dissuasive for the biggest offenders, […] sometimes sentenced to dozens of years in prison without stopping their trafficking”. Among the avenues, the minister mentioned in particular “the confiscation of ill-gotten assets, money, cars, real estate”, in France and abroad.
He thus announced that he would go “around January 20” in the United Arab Emirates, where certain identified drug traffickers thrive, in order to“improve judicial cooperation”. “This issue of money laundering must be the most important, because we can hurt traffickers even before their conviction», he insisted, recalling that“a law exists which allows seizures before a judgment”.
“When organized crime has enough resources to have parallel telephone networks, to have financing circuits abroad, to be able to put money into […] real estate, catering, […] and to be able to corrupt agents or threaten them, […] we are at a tipping point for the Republic and we must collectively wake up.”
“Show apartment” for drug traffickers
The minister thus said he wished “let us increase the penalties of those who corrupt and/or threaten these state agents”. He expressed his intention to give “instructions in the criminal policy circular to prosecutors so that attacks, threats and corruption against public officials are prosecuted with the greatest firmness”, et “particularly condemned”.
Returning to his controversial proposal to strengthen isolation in detention “of the 100 biggest drug traffickers”Gérald Darmanin explained that he wanted to do “a sort of “starter” program”d’«show apartment »as in real estate. “I note that when these narcobandits are put in solitary confinement, a certain number of targeted assassinations have stopped“, he said, explaining that he had asked the prison administration to “give him the 100 requested profiles”so that then “we can show this model apartment, which I hope we will generalize to all those who continue their prison traffic”.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Minister of Justice was to visit a closed educational center before going to the Marseille Baumettes remand center, whose director and head of detention had to be temporarily relieved and placed under protection at the beginning of December after being threatened by a drug trafficker.
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