Nineteen people were referred to the Paris correctional court over an alleged circuit in which cocaine imported to mainland France was paid for with cannabis shipped to Guadeloupe.[1] Twenty suspects were caught in the case, and nineteen of them are initially being sent for trial.[1] The alleged hub is 48-year-old Gilles T., officially a fruit-and-vegetable wholesaler nicknamed Gillou or Gwada.[1] Investigators say he allegedly received in the Antilles cannabis sent from mainland France by the Strasbourg team in exchange for cocaine travelling the other way.[1] Mickaël H., 43, presented by investigators as the head of the Strasbourg branch, spoke of five kilos of poor-quality cocaine recovered by an accomplice, Salah B., 35.[1] He admits only a logistics role for 69 kilos of cocaine.[2] Jefferson J.G., a 31-year-old Colombian, was arrested in Saint-Martin, where arms and cocaine loaves were found in a studio, villa and warehouse allegedly made available by Gilles T.[1]
The case started with the April 2021 seizure at Le Havre of 112 kg of cocaine hidden in moving containers from Guadeloupe on a tip from the Office anti-stupéfiants (Ofast), followed by arrest waves from October 2022 under the Paris Juridiction interrégionale spécialisée (Jirs).[1] Investigators describe mainly cocaine hidden in legal freight and shipped by sea from Latin America to complicit teams in the Paris region and Alsace.[1] The origin of the cannabis remains unclear, although the investigation lists trips by suspects to the Netherlands.[1] A second account describes the same transatlantic barter as cocaine from Latin America exchanged for cannabis shipped from Alsace.[2]
Investigators describe a well-equipped network using jammers in containers to block tracking, and say Gillou boasted of contacts in the secondary ports of Montoir-de-Bretagne near Saint-Nazaire and Dunkirk.[1] The network allegedly lost 300 kg to a rival Le Havre gang in an episode that included shots fired at a van chased by rivals outside the port.[1] The twentieth suspect, 36-year-old Parisian Marwane C., was arrested in January 2022 aboard a Brazilian-flagged fishing boat carrying 900 kg of cocaine off the Canary Islands.[1] He will not appear with the nineteen because he was sentenced to ten years in Spain, where he must serve half the term before expulsion, and a fixing hearing on 3 November will set the calendar for the future trial.[1] A second account confirms that nineteen people were sent to the Paris correctional court and that a fixing hearing on 3 November must set the trial calendar.[2]
