The Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) public prosecutor’s office announced on Monday that it was appealing the judgment of the criminal court which, on July 4, acquitted Mélanie Boulanger, former mayor of the small town of Canteleu (Seine-Maritime), who was prosecuted for complicity in drug trafficking. “The prosecution has appealed the acquittal of Mélanie Boulanger,” the public prosecutor’s office told AFP, confirming information from France 3 Normandy.
In the name of a Republic “copy” facing the octopus of drug trafficking in this «narco-ville», The Bobigny prosecutor’s office had requested at the end of June a one-year suspended prison sentence, as well as five years of ineligibility and a 10,000 euro fine against Mélanie Boulanger. For the prosecutor, the mayor’s transmission of certain sensitive information to traffickers, as well as some of her interventions with the local police, signalled a “a pact of non-agression” with the traffickers.
If the court noted a “weakening of ethical safeguards” of the 47-year-old socialist elected official, who had a relationship with her deputy who was close to the traffickers, he considered, however, that there was no evidence in the file “positive act” likely to characterize complicity.
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 an estimate by the court, this criminal organization generated a turnover of 15 million euros over the two years covered by the investigation, between 2019 and 2021.
The Bobigny prosecutor’s office also indicated on Monday that it was appealing the decision against a defendant sentenced to five years in prison, two of which were suspended with probation, and who is now on semi-liberty for the months he has left to serve, after those already spent in preventive detention. Seven of the 18 defendants in this trial have also appealed their convictions.
Source: www.liberation.fr
