It is the result of more than a year of investigation. The Mayenne gendarmes in cooperation with the Belgian police and supported by the GIGN of Nantes arrested seven people on Tuesday in Mayenne and Belgium, involved in a “structured trafficking” of cannabis and cocaine, announces the public prosecutor of Laval in a press release this Friday evening. Six people were remanded in custody in the department, a seventh was imprisoned in Belgium.
A vast operation Tuesday in Mayenne
The operation, carried out “in cooperation with the Belgian internal security forces, within the framework of European mutual legal assistance”, has been conducted with the support of the gendarmes of Mayenne, and the GIGN branch of Nantes, “hiring 80 gendarmes”, Laval prosecutor Céline Maigne said in a press release.
She has allowed “the arrest in Mayenne and Belgium (Tuesday) of 7 individuals implicated in this structured trafficking in cannabis and cocaine”, said the magistrate. A handgun, 350 grams of cocaine, clothes and vehicles, as well as large sums of money were seized.
“Aged 26 to 42, six of the accused were brought before the investigating magistrate at the end of their custody (Thursday and Friday), indicted and placed in detention “, added the prosecutor. “The seventh was served with a European arrest warrant and was imprisoned in Belgium”, underlined the Laval prosecutor who specifies that, three of the accused have already been convicted of drug trafficking offenses.
More than a year of investigation
The preliminary investigation was opened in October 2020, a judicial investigation in December 2020 of “counts of acquisition, possession, offer or transfer, transport of narcotics, as well as laundering of the proceeds of these offenses”.