Former Mayor of Canteleu Acquitted of Drug Trafficking Complicity Charges

Although the court noted a “weakening of Mélanie Boulanger’s ethical safeguards”, it considered that there was no “positive act” in the file likely to characterise complicity.

The Bobigny court acquitted, on Thursday July 4, Mélanie Boulanger, former mayor of the small town of Canteleu (Seine-Maritime), of charges of complicity in drug trafficking. While the court noted a “weakening of ethical safeguards” of the 47-year-old socialist elected official, he considered, however, that there was no evidence in the file “positive act” likely to characterize complicity. Mélanie Boulanger denied having favored the business of the Meziani clan, the family that holds the drug trafficking in her city with an iron fist.

In the name of a Republic “copy” facing the octopus of drug trafficking in this “narco-city”the Bobigny prosecutor’s office had, at the end of June, requested a one-year suspended prison sentence against her, as well as five years of ineligibility and a fine of 10,000 euros. For the prosecutor, the transmission of certain sensitive information to traffickers by the mayor under pressure, as well as some of her interventions with the local police, signaled a “a pact of non-agression” with the traffickers.

The court, however, sentenced his assistant and lover Hasbi Colak to one year in prison, suspended, for having lent his car, which had been used in a cocaine transaction in Seine-Saint-Denis, in particular. “punishing breaches of integrity as an elected official”.

During a chaotic trial that lasted from the end of May to the end of June, the Bobigny court tried 18 defendants in connection with trafficking “very high intensity” cocaine, heroin and cannabis based in Canteleu, a poor town in the Rouen metropolitan area.

According to a court estimate, this criminal organization generated a turnover of 15 million euros over the two years covered by the investigation, between 2019 and 2021.“The court noted a quasi-dynastic presence in Canteleu, reinforced by ties of friendship and marriage, giving the delinquent group a clannish aspect that was particularly difficult to infiltrate.”declared its president, Jean-Baptiste Acchiardi.

At the head of this “delinquent company generating exceptional capital inflows”Aziz Meziani said “the U”the clan leader who fled to Morocco, was sentenced in his absence to the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, as well as a fine of two million euros. All the other defendants in the case were sentenced to sentences ranging from two years suspended to eight years in prison.