in Monaco, the dangerous friendships between a police captain and a Serbian mafioso – Libération

For ten years, an official from the financial brigade stationed on the Rock spent time with the lieutenant of one of the main gangs in the Balkans. A case which illustrates the risks of mafia control over institutions. First part of our investigation into Serbian crime and Sky ECC encrypted messaging, infiltrated by the French police.

This October 4, police custody has been going on for more than thirty hours in the premises of the PJ in Nice. A police officer in the Monaco financial brigade, Céline P., 44, had never before found herself in the shoes of a suspect. Despite fatigue, she strives to answer the investigators’ questions about her links with a Serbian businessman with a troubled profile, Branivir V. She mentions a relationship “friendly” And “festive” with the one she describes in turn as “margoulin” and of “little strike”, but whose true status she claims to have always been unaware of. That of lieutenant of a powerful mafia organization specializing in drug and arms trafficking, suspected by the courts of using Monaco as a money laundering platform. Faced with increasingly edifying elements opposing her denials, the policewoman ends up collapsing. “I’m stunned, she stammers. I never helped these people, I never acted for them… I just liked to party and now I’m taking it all in the face.”

Céline P. and Branivir V. were arrested with around fifteen other people during a vast dragnet between Monaco and the South of France, as revealed the Parisian. Indicted, notably for “corruption” And “conspiracy”, both were placed in pre-trial detention. Release was able to consult unpublished elements of the investigation carried out for more than two years