“Concern” of the prosecutor of Marseille
The reform plans to place all the police services of a department under the authority of a single departmental director, reporting to the prefect. The Marseille prosecutor expressed her concern for this reform project.
The Marseille prosecutor, whose dealings in serious crime cases linked in particular to complex drug trafficking networks, was expressed on Friday, September 30 from the” worry“in the face of the project to reform the judicial police.
“Our last subject of concern is that of the reform of the judicial police (…) which will soon be presented to us“, declared the public prosecutor, Dominique Laurens, during the re-entry hearing, at the judicial court of Marseille, the third most important in France.
Led by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin and the Director General of the National Police Frédéric Veaux, the project plans to place all the police services of a department: intelligence, public security, border police (PAF) and judicial police (PJ), under the authority of a single Departmental Director of the National Police (DDPN), reporting to the prefect.
He encounters the opposition of many investigators of the PJ who fear the dilution of their know-how, even the abandonment of certain territories. “Who will soon be able to deal with our investigations of social and tax fraud, our investigations that we want to initiate on the large money laundering circuit or on the embezzlement of public funds?“, wondered Ms. Laurens.
“How can we concentrate, dedicate ourselves, to what we want to do on the circuits of the dirty money from the points of sale of narcotics (…) so that we trace this chain of money which circulates and which go back to the delinquents who are (…) refugees abroad?“, she continued.
Marseille has a Specialized Interregional Jurisdiction (Jirs) which has jurisdiction over the entire Mediterranean arc for serious crime, including drug trafficking.
“The choice that was made to build a device on the department seems to us indeed problematic on the operational relevance of identifying these (criminal) teams which are extremely mobile and which obviously completely free themselves from these borders.“Administrative, again reached the prosecutor.
Before her, the Attorney General at the Court of Cassation François Molins had ruled in early September that the reform was “carrying a certain number of dangers”. The Attorney General of the Versailles Court of Appeal Marc Cimamonti had described him as “four times badthis reform.
Two missions of information on this project, which arouse the hostility of many investigators but also of magistrates, will be transmitted to the National Assembly and the Senate. With AFP