Gendarmes from Nord and Belgium’s federal judicial police carried out a joint operation on the morning of 11 June 2019 against a cannabis trafficking network running between the two countries.[1] Investigators searched about ten sites at the same time, in France around Maubeuge and in Belgium.[1]

Seven people were arrested and held in police custody during the operation.[1] The searches yielded 26 kg of cannabis herb, more than 80,000 euros in cash, weighing and packaging equipment, a banknote counter, a pump-action shotgun, many phones including several encrypted ones and about ten vehicles.[1] At the end of their custody, two of the seven were brought before an investigating judge, placed under formal investigation and held in pre-trial detention.[1]

The investigators acted under a rogatory commission issued by an investigating judge at the Avesnes-sur-Helpe tribunal de grande instance, a regional court, and the Belgian police worked under international mutual legal assistance.[1] About fifty gendarmes took part, with the Lille research section, the Lille interministerial research group, special protection and intervention platoons, two dog teams trained to find drugs and banknotes, and local brigades.[1] The case began in April 2018 with an operation by the Avesnes-sur-Helpe research brigade which arrested several people described by the Gendarmerie as the lower tier of the network.[1] Gendarmes established that the traffickers bought drugs in the Netherlands several times a month.[1] The follow-up investigation after the April 2018 arrests ran for about ten more months before the June 2019 raids, during which the gendarmes established the network worked between France and Belgium.[2] France 3 likewise reports 10 months of cooperation between the Nord gendarmerie and the Belgian police forces in this case.[3]