The Aisne gendarmerie announces having discovered 200 grams of cannabis during a check carried out with a sniffer dog near Ham station (Somme).
A check at Ham station
Last week, a gendarmerie check took place at Ham station. Led jointly by the gendarmes of the Somme and those of Aisne. The latter were notably reinforced by Themis, a dog specializing in the search for narcotics.
Good luck during this check since the gendarmerie announces having found 200 grams of cannabis resin hidden in a sock in a packet of cakes during a check at Ham station.
Picardy: customs seized 217 km of narcotics in 2023
Michaël Lachaux, regional director of customs, took stock of the activity of his services in 2023 in Picardy. Seizures are at record levels, particularly for tobacco.
Forty tonnes of tobacco, 217 kg of narcotics, 93,906 counterfeit items, 1,117,300 euros of laundered money. The figures for the 2023 activity of the 168 customs agents stationed in Picardy show the extent to which the region is at the heart of a great deal of trafficking. Michal Lachaux, regional customs director, takes stock of each of them.
225 seizures of counterfeit tobacco
“39,990 kg of tobacco seized, this represents a third of the activity in Hauts-de-France. We are between two zones, Belgium and the Netherlands on one side and Luxembourg on the other. In Picardy, we therefore have an international network at play. In just a few weeks, networks are able to organize themselves to sell several tonnes. This is what we saw in particular in Ham.
This activity is up 172% year-on-year. With 225 findings, we have multiplied this figure tenfold compared to 2021. Seizures are on average 200 kg, which represents three months of work on average for a tobacconist in the Somme. For example, Ham tobacconists told us they noticed an increase in their activity of around 20 to 30% after stopping the illegal activity.
We conducted analyzes on the counterfeit products seized. There are animal droppings, heavy metals and the filter is sometimes just plain paper. There is therefore a risk of burning your lips.
-An anti-tobacco group is operational in Picardy, it allows us to intervene everywhere and quickly.
Two cyber patrollers are there to fight against online trafficking. We see certain networks “
Cannabis delivered by parcel
“Eminently important subject. Picardy has two issues: transit flows but we are seeing more and more seizures at destination points, whether in packages or cars.
Last year, 217 kg of narcotics were seized, including 31 kg of heroin (including 19 kg in Aisne alone), 1.6 kg of cocaine (including 1.4 kg in Oise), 87.2 kg of cannabis and 97.7 kg of synthetic drugs (including 86 kg in the Somme). The first cocaine processing laboratory was discovered in Aisne. We are impacted because we are halfway between Belgium and the Paris region. But we see that the networks now supply cities as well as the countryside.”
New means for customs
“With the opening of a new brigade at Beauvais airport, we are present 24 hours a day, 365 days in this hub. Since the beginning of the year, we have already seized more tobacco and capital than last year” concludes Michaël Lachaux, already looking towards 2024.
In its fight against trafficking, customs is equipping itself with new tools.
First, a mobile scanner truck. It allows, in just a few seconds, to see what is hidden in luggage: “This makes it possible to avoid searching all luggage, particularly when checking a coach. It’s much faster and our agents are trained to analyze the images as carefully as possible,” explains Michaël Lachaux. Then, a “spectrometer” allows you to analyze a product (powder or liquid) and know its almost exact composition: “He knows 16,000 references, which gives a wide range. On the other hand, if the composition does not correspond to what is announced, we must send the product to the laboratory for possible prosecution.”
