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France to set up national prosecutor’s office for combatting organised crime

The French Minister of Justice wants to create a national prosecutor's office dedicated to fighting organised crime and plans to offer reduced sentences for "repentant" drug traffickers.

Published: 28 April 2024 13:02 CEST

France's Minister for Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti delivers a speech during a visit to a school in Nice, south-eastern France in April 2024. Dupond-Moretti plans to set up a special national prosecutor's office for fighting organised crime. (Photo by Valery HACHE / POOL / AFP)

Speaking to French Sunday newspaper Tribune Dimanche, Eric Dupond-Moretti said he also intends to offer “repentant” drug traffickers a change of identify.

This new public prosecutor’s office – PNACO – “will strengthen our judicial arsenal to better fight against crime at the high end of the spectrum,” Dupond-Moretti explained.

Former head of the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office Jean-François Ricard, appointed a few days ago as special advisor to the minister, will be responsible for consultations to shape the reform, the details of which will be presented in October, Dupond-Moretti said.

Inspired by the pentiti (repent) law in force in Italy, which is used to fight mafia crime, Dupond-Moretti also announced that he would create a “genuine statute” that rewards repentance.

“Legislation [in France] already exists in this area, but it is far too restrictive and therefore not very effective,” Dupond-Moretti explained.

In future, a judge will be able to grant special status to a repentant criminal who has “collaborated with justice” and “made sincere, complete and decisive statements to dismantle criminal networks”.

The sentence incurred by the person concerned would be reduced and, for their protection, they would be offered, “an official and definitive change of civil status”, a “totally new” measure, the minister said.

The Minister of Justice is also proposing that, in future, special assize courts, composed solely of professional magistrates, be entrusted not only with organised drug trafficking, as is already the case today, but also with settling scores between traffickers.

This will avoid pressure and threats on the citizen jurors who have to judge these killings, he said.

Finally, the minister plans to create a crime of “organised criminal association” in the French penal code. This will be punishable by 20 years of imprisonment.

Currently, those who import “cocaine from Colombia” risk half that sentence for “criminal association”, he said.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.