More respite “for drug gangs”, promises the Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, on a visit to Marseille

Opération fermeté à Marseille pour Gérald Darmanin. MAXPPP

Le ministre était en déplacement hier à Marseille annonce son intention d’isoler "les 100 plus gros narcotrafiquants" et de "taper au portefeuille" en confisquant leurs biens.

Yesterday in Marseille, Gérald Darmanin had the air of a two-headed hydra… No longer quite Minister of the Interior, a position he held for two years, and newly appointed Minister of Justice for a good week.

Strike while the iron is hot, while occupying the political and media arena at the beginning of the year, and already trying to make his mark: that was the context for a visit that was intended to be offensive. Yes, he insisted in essence, justice needs air.

“In France, the major problem is the resources allocated to justice, only 2% of the State budget“. He hopes that the programming of 1,600 additional justice personnel this year will indeed be validated by the government of which he is a member. “I fully expect them to be concrete“, he specified.

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Bouches-du-Rhône: 200 assize trials pending

200 assize trials are pending in Bouches-du-Rhône, he insisted, due to a lack of sufficient personnel. “When we want firmness, we must be certain that people will be judged and that sentences will be carried out.” But the trip was mainly intended to send a signal. The fight against trafficking of narcotics will be its priority.

Objective: “Give more resources to magistrates specializing in economic and financial matters” to fight against money laundering and “hit the wallets of drug traffickers“, by confiscating ill-gotten gains, money, cars, real estate, sometimes abroad.

Isolation

“41 million euros were confiscated this year in Bouches-du-Rhône“, rejoices Gérald Darmanin who sees this as a way to “hurt the drug gangs”.

Two months after the presentation of the “plan to fight drug trafficking” in Marseille by his predecessor Didier Migaud, the new Minister of Justice intends to place in solitary confinement “the 100 biggest drug traffickers“, already detained, to prevent them from prospering their business remotely, with a ban on communicating with the outside world, telephone jamming, cleaning of cells.

Hunt for corruption and threats

"We must continue to keep a particularly close eye on attacks against persons in positions of public authority, police officers, gendarmes, magistrates, clerks, prison officers", insisted Gérald Darmanin. "They are sometimes subject to corruption, and it must be condemned with the greatest firmness, but often with threats." Whether they are "physical or verbal".

"We are going to increase, at least that is what I hope, the penalties against those who threaten and corrupt state agents." 

The minister said he measured “the very difficult conditions” of the civil servants of his ministry, “given the increase in litigation and acts of delinquency“.