Expatica France
A suspected leader in a drug trafficking and money laundering ring uncovered by French and Swiss investigators last week fled to Morocco before the wave of arrests, Swiss daily Le Temps reported Tuesday.
The man, whose identity was not given beyond that he was of Moroccan origin and living in Paris, was reportedly a childhood friend of the main Swiss suspect, Meyer Elmaleh.
Elmaleh, a Geneva-based wealth manager suspected of running the money laundering racket Paris says legitimised at least 100 million euros, had said during police questioning his friend had suggested a tax-evasion arrangement for his clients, Le Temps reported.
According to the deal, Elmaleh’s French clients could discretely access untaxed cash in France in exchange for sending money from their Swiss bank accounts to “donors looking to provide money discretely to people and institutions in Israel and elsewhere,” the daily said.
But instead of running a charity, the friend had been heading a ring trafficking cannabis from Morocco to France, Le Temps reported.
He had reportedly left Paris for Morocco, just before last week’s string of arrests in France and Switzerland.
Le Temps also reported that Elmaleh’s assistant, who was also briefly detained before being set free on bail, had written down in a “small, spiral notebook” all the transactions, as well as the names of beneficiaries of the money laundering business.
Reportedly figuring on that list and likely among the total 19 people arrested in France and Switzerland last week in connection with the case were a number of company executives, an architect and the owner of an art gallery, as well as the deputy mayor in a Paris district, who has since been forced out.Elmaleh’s lawyer Josiane Stickel-Circurel confirmed to AFP the existence of the notebook, but said she did not know what it contained.
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