After a breakfast in the prefecture, Gerald Darmanin went this Friday July 22 to the Bastia police station to talk about crime in Corsica. The Minister of the Interior announced judicial reinforcements from the start of the school year, as well as his wish to tackle drug trafficking on the island. On the other hand, he refuses to use the word mafia “because I speak French and in French, mafia means organized crime”adds the minister.
Three settling of accounts have been avoided since the beginning of the year” – Gerald Darmanin
After more than an hour of discussion with the prefects, the public prosecutors near the Court of Appeal of Bastia and the court of Aix, the public prosecutor of Marseille, the police services, the gendarmerie and the intelligence services, where it was question of criminality in Corsica, the Minister of the Interior wants to insist on the results obtained. “Based on very important information, we have enabled the resolution of investigations, avoiding settling of accounts. Three settling of scores have been avoided since the start of the year. Very important cases to avoid assassinations and which currently allow the resolution of investigations which fall within serious crime and very large seizures of narcotics and networks which are stopped jointly in Marseille with destinations towards Corsica. It indeed shows the progress of the investigations, but also perhaps a stronger criminal activity.
Gerald Damanin takes advantage of his trip to the island to announce “strengthening of judicial resources” in order to improve the fight against crime. “The Keeper of the Seals has decided on reinforcements both on the Island of Beauty and in Marseilles for the prosecution and for the magistrates of the seat. And I asked […] strengthen judicial resources. So on the Isle of Beauty, in Marseille, which is the place where the major criminal investigations are carried out, but also in Paris. And I think that for the start of the new school year in September, these reinforcement plans will be there and we are going to put a lot more investigators, judicial police officers to serve the magistrates.”
Drugs are a dead end for young people
Among the three main lines of work, Gerald Darmanin also wants to tackle drug trafficking. “We can clearly see that the main difficulty, because the Isle of Beauty was not used to this, is an increase in drug trafficking and drug traffickers carried out by Corsican crime itself, but also outside to this Corsican criminality. And we absolutely have to fight this. Firstly because there are a lot more drugs arriving on the island and affecting Corsican youth in particular. And we all know that drugs are a dead end for youth and it is a way to death and not a way to life. Corsica must not become the island that is the hub of drugs in the Mediterranean. And so we absolutely have to put more resources into the fight against this organized crime which is undoubtedly the consequence of the very significant resources we are putting into the fight against drugs in Marseille and which tends to move here to Corsica.”