the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office requires the criminal referral of the mayor of Canteleu and her deputy

Mélanie Boulanger, socialist mayor of Canteleu (Seine-Maritime), and one of her deputies are suspected of “complicity in drug trafficking”.

The Bobigny public prosecutor’s office requested the criminal referral of Mélanie Boulanger, socialist mayor of Canteleu (Seine-Maritime) since 2014 and one of her deputies for “complicity in drug trafficking”, Sunday December 24, confirmed a source close to the investigation with France Bleu Normandie on Wednesday December 27, confirming information from the newspaper The world. This requisition is part of the judicial investigation opened since September 2019 for drug trafficking and criminal conspiracy.

In this case of vast drug trafficking in Seine-Maritime, in Eure and in the Paris region, 19 people were arrested and placed in police custody, including 17 in Rouen, on October 8, 2021. Among them, the mayor of Canteleu and his economic development deputy, Hasbi Colak.

Of these 19 arrests, eight of those held in police custody, including the mayor and her deputy, were released two days later, on Sunday, without any charges brought against them and without having been presented to an investigating judge. During a press conference after her release on October 11, 2021, the elected socialist declared that her custody was “unjustified”. The 11 other people arrested were indicted by the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office in October 2021, for various reasons. Among them, eight people living in Normandy and three in Île-de-France.

A “mafia system with connections to Morocco”

Investigators, who have been following this case since 2019, cite a vast network of drugs and money laundering in the Rouen metropolitan area. A source close to the case described a “mafia system with connections to Morocco” at France Bleu Normandie. In total, around one million euros of movable property was seized, cars, bank accounts, 340,000 euros in cash, firearms, 75 kg of cutting products, 15 kg of heroin and 6 kg of cannabis resin.

A source close to the investigation told France Bleu Normandie that a family “well established locally to have “political influence” with “connections and links with the town hall”, interested the investigators. This is what justified the police custody of Mélanie Boulanger and her deputy. Still according to this source, four brothers whose ages vary between their twenties, for the youngest, and forties, for the oldest, are at the head of this trafficking network. Two of them were arrested in 2021, two others had been on the run abroad for several years.

The Bobigny investigating judge had indicted three people, presented as “lieutenants” of the family by a source close to the case. The public prosecutor of Bobigny Eric Mathais specified that he “it will be up to the investigating judge to assess the action to be taken concerning these people in the light of the elements collected within the framework of the judicial investigation”.