Drug trafficking is not limited to the capital and its suburbs. Nor to regional metropolises. While younger and younger kids kill each other in Marseille for a few square meters of sales territory, less competition, there are almost no deaths in rural areas. But, over the years, in the countryside too, the number of consumers is increasing, and the demand is pressing.
The dope market is booming there, and the traffickers’ business, more discreet, is no less flourishing. As proof, this case brought to light at the beginning of July following a judicial investigation opened a year and a few months earlier in Privas, prefecture of Ardèche.
From the initial research undertaken by the gendarmes to the further investigations of the interministerial research group (GIR) of Lyon, a long-term investigation made it possible to dismantle a team made up of a dozen traffickers. Which did not necessarily know each other but have, for at least three years, flooded part of the Rhône-Alpes region with cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy.
There are legal proceedings that make you travel. In April 2021, the gendarmes of the Tournon-sur-Rhône research brigade (Ardèche) probably did not expect so much, when they were seized of a narcotics file by an investigating judge from Privas. Their investigations will take them from the steep reliefs of the Ardèche to the monotonous urbanism of the Lyon region, passing through the humidity of Guyana, the torrid heat of southern Spain, after a charmless detour via Athis-Mons ( Essonne), in the Paris region.
The case begins at the end of December 2019 in Blois. Two small drug dealers unknown to the justice system are spotted, while they engage in a double traffic: cannabis and cocaine. They are tapped, and their telephone conversations allow investigators to identify who appears to be their wholesaler. Romain G., 34, lives in Privas. He also has no criminal record. He is doing well and controlling an illicit business that is doing well. In turn, the gendarmes place him under surveillance, which takes them to Lyon, to two brothers specialized in the “go fast” delivery of cannabis between the south of Spain and the capital of Gaul.
Like Romain G., Alexandre and Kevin B., 31 and 34 years old respectively, do not appear in the files of people reported by the police or gendarmerie. By dint of surveillance, the investigators discover that Romain G. is supplied with them, who are supplied with cocaine in Villeurbanne, in the Lyon suburbs, at a certain Christian G., 36 years old. He also does not appear in the files. Watched in turn, he takes the investigators to Athis-Mons, in the southern suburbs of Paris, close to Orly airport, to a certain Ishmael.
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