This group has committed hundreds of burglaries for a prejudice to “several million” euros. In November 2022, an operation conducted by a Franco-Spanish survey team enabled the arrest of twenty-five people.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
Between July 2021 and October 2022, a Serbo-Croatian criminal group scored France, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Austria , committing hundreds of burglaries for a prejudice of “several million” euros.
This group, made up of around sixty people, was dismantled in November 2022 during an operation led by a Franco-Spanish survey team, with twenty-five inquiry to the key, the French gendarmerie announced , Saturday February 4.
The group was extremely well structured, with a “very integrated clan, family functioning”, ranging from teams of burglars to the receivers, including money laundering thus harvested, described to the France-Presse agency General Marc de Tarlé, head of the central office for the fight against traveling delinquency (OCLDI).
It was organized around a family piloting teams of burglars made up in particular of family children and other siblings with strong pressures and firm results obligations, detailed the gendarmerie in a press release.
French investigators began to work for “summer 2021” on “about twenty facts and some individuals”, details General de Tarlé. Then an “important surveillance work and numerous exchanges with Spain, Croatia in particular” made it possible to identify a Serbo-Croatian group. In September 2021, the specialized interregional jurisdiction (JIRS) of Bordeaux opened a judicial information.
Faced with the international scale of the phenomenon, on September 19, 2022, a common Franco-Spanish investigation team was created, under the aegis of the European Union judicial cooperation unit (Eurojust) and with The support of the European Union agency for the cooperation of repressive services (Europol), to ensure better coordination on the day of arrests which take place simultaneously in several countries.
On November 22, 2022, twenty-five people, aged 20 to 40, were arrested in France, Spain, Netherlands, Croatia and Italy. Among them, seventeen individuals appear in the French file and eight in Spanish. During the searches, it was seized 550,000 euros in false tickets, vehicles, weapons, jewelry and luxury items. Of the twenty-five implicated, “twenty-three were indicted by the French or Spanish and imprisoned magistrates, and two are under house arrest in Italy and the Netherlands pending their delivery to the French authorities “Added the gendarmerie.
The teams, responsible for burglaries, were installed in Spain, France, the Netherlands and Italy. They led raids from three weeks to a month in a country and returned to their base, said General de Tarlé. The criminals used vehicles recovered in the chosen country during their operations: thus in France, vehicles were registered in France. “Well dressed, they did not stand out. They were based in the population,” explains the general.
They operated by day, in rural areas, with women in their teams and at night in the opulent neighborhoods of cities with experienced male teams. Their objective, steal jewelry and cash.
The total damage for facts only integrated into French, Spanish and Swiss procedures “exceeds 2 million euros”. The flight product was bleached in different European countries by acquiring luxury and real estate products. Jewelry was sold to concealment sectors among their knowledge.