“I don’t understand why I was arrested. I was a VTC driver and, that evening, I was only doing one errand. » This 30-year-old man was indicted on September 19 in Pontoise (Val-d’Oise) for receiving stolen goods from an organized gang and criminal association. During the year 2023 in the Paris region, in the company of four other suspects, he would have implemented and participated in a lucrative network of theft and export of vehicles to the Gambia via Germany and Belgium .
“This is a serious matter. It is a structured network of car thieves who acted on command,” underlines a source close to the case. In this case, the number of SUVs exported could not be quantified by investigators. They established the “concealment route” by working on the telephones of suspects arrested in flagrante delicto. “It’s always the same pattern: the head of the network has contacts in Africa,” explains a source close to the matter. The cars are ordered there before being stolen in Île-de-France then transported by sea with complicity in the port of arrival.”
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