Drug Ring Busted in Montpellier: 4 Arrested, 1 Suspect Flees to Morocco

The dismantling of the drug trafficking network follows information received in April 2021. The investigators from the Anti-Drug and Underground Economy Unit followed the members of the same family. Months were needed to identify and dismantle this network. They discovered that the "Rien sans rien" grocery store was selling tobacco without authorization to about twenty customers per hour and this, just a few meters from a legal tobacco shop, and also had a drug dealing point selling some 200 g to 300 g of cannabis resin per day, reports Midi Libre.

The investigators managed to arrest four people, including three brothers, on July 26. The arrest of the network leader, a 23-year-old man from Montpellier, took place in the Le Centurion grocery store he recently opened in Castelnau-le-Lez. War weapons including a 7.65 mm automatic pistol, as well as two magazines for other automatic weapons and a bulletproof vest were seized at his girlfriend’s place. Suspected of being the supplier of contraband cigarettes, the brother of the network leader was arrested as he was returning to relatives with 50 packs of Marlboro cigarettes.

The youngest of the three brothers is the co-manager of the Rien sans Rien grocery store, and is also a professional footballer. He will be taken into custody after returning from Luxembourg. The investigators then arrested one of the two other suspects who would be members of the network. The fifth suspect, nicknamed Cowboy, was the one who supplied the product to the family. According to the police, he would be on the run in Morocco.