French Customs Blacklists Moroccan Officials in Smuggling Probe at Sète Port

The case broke out following the arrest by the customs services of Sète of senior officials, holding dual French-Moroccan nationality. The suspects, originally from northern Morocco, were in the habit of smuggling valuable jewelry and large sums of foreign currency.

Responding to a request from the Association of the Great Rif for Human Rights, the French customs had opened an investigation into a group of individuals suspected of using the port of Sète to transport valuable goods and foreign currency. The investigators revealed the existence of a parallel banking system, a vast money laundering network operating between Morocco and France.

A blacklist of businessmen and political officials from northern Morocco, accompanied by the license plates of vehicles registered in Germany, Spain and France, was drawn up by customs, with the respective dates of their passage through the French port towards Nador, reports the daily Al Massae.

In total, 18 defendants with dual nationality were arrested by the French gendarmerie, for their alleged links with cocaine and cannabis trafficking networks. 37 kilograms of hashish and 5 of cocaine were seized at the end of a surveillance that had lasted several months, the same source points out. The gendarmes had also discovered firearms as well as sums of money estimated at several million euros.