A corruption network involving a clerk at the Meaux prison (Seine-et-Marne) has been dismantled, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned on Thursday, December 21, from sources close to the investigation. The clerk is suspected of having deliberately made errors which allowed the release of detainees incarcerated for drug trafficking.
Six people, two of whom worked at the Meaux penitentiary center, were indicted for “active and passive corruption by and on a person entrusted with a public service mission”, “organized gang fraud in judgment”, “misappropriation of the purpose of files”, “criminal association with a view to crimes” punishable by ten years of imprisonment, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to AFP.
After their indictment by a judge specializing in the fight against organized crime, these three men and three women were presented to a judge of freedoms and detention, who examined their files behind closed doors in order to preserve secrecy. of the investigation and the continuation of the investigations. All were placed in pre-trial detention, said the prosecution, in Caen, Beauvais or Fresnes.
Three “big profiles” of drug trafficking
According to two sources close to the case, during the year 2021 at Meaux prison, this prison administration clerk, aged around thirty, is suspected of having modified criminal records and of not having transmitted requests, which had the consequence of canceling the committal warrants of at least two detainees. Another woman working at the penitentiary center and her sister are also implicated.
The beneficiaries or potential beneficiaries, indicted on Wednesday, are three “big profiles” of drug trafficking, according to a source close to the case. Among them Firat C., born in 1987, was in detention for “directing a group whose purpose is illicit drug trafficking”, a crime punishable by life imprisonment. Ibrahim D. was in detention for “extortion with weapons”, “criminal association”, “kidnapping” and “possession of weapons of war”.
“I bitterly regret that the courts decided to detain my client before carrying out even basic checks which were at [his] disposal and which could have been carried out months ago,” reacted Sarah Mauger-Poliak, lawyer for a third indicted who benefited from a reduced sentence.
The other lawyers did not wish to speak at the end of the hearing before the judge of freedoms and detention.
