MARSEILLE GANGSTERS : Capitale Française du Crime Organisé ?

MARSEILLE GANGSTERS : Capitale Française du Crime Organisé ?

I’m a rooster handler by nature. For me,
that’s what pays off. You are always armed, citizens. You saw correctly, there are people who fart all over the place, you come across the psychopath and not… It’s for nothing. You always have something on you, there. Of course. It’s for your own safety. What do you have? I’ll show you a little. It’s good. Did you see?
It’s not just a setting. It’s a little Togo, a little rooster. So what kind of weapon is this? 11.43. Is this the thugs’ weapon? It is the weapon of the Marseillais. It’s banal, in addition, weapons have arrived in Marseille, It’s banal. I am fully armed, sometimes I have a little sell, I have a small 35 on me, after that it depends on the days. Marco is 32 years old. He lives in a city in Marseille. He got out of prison two years ago and started using cocaine. It only sells by the kilo. I went back to prison, I was a burglar, I was a store breaker. Afterwards I became a robber, after I went to the throne. It seems like it’s particularly hot in Marseille. It’s hot everywhere, that’s how it is. After you pay attention to the police, there is the police, then there is the competition. Then you have to pay the suppliers on time, especially if it’s done at 20 years old. It’s a whole mess because it doesn’t share, that’s how it is. You have to look behind you all the time when you walk. If Marco is armed, It is above all to defend its business. Oh but excuse me, You’re missing a year’s worth of weight, mate. This is not an opinion, that’s how it is. It’s a matter of respect, I don’t say it. That’s how it is, I trust you, I’m not telling you. The trafficker demands respect, but that wouldn’t stop him from pulling the occasional dirty trick. Welcome in Marseille. His good mother, its old port and its criminal environment. The settling of scores with weapons of war bloodied the city. 20 deaths in 2013, more than 70 in 5 years. How can this massacre be explained? For a year, Jérôme Pierrat and Sébastien Thohen immersed themselves in the underworld districts of Marseille. Jérôme Pierrat has been investigating organized crime for over 20 years. Sébastien Thohen is known as a comedian and columnist on Canal+. But he grew up partly in Marseille. He knows the hidden side of the city well. Together, they met the old bosses, as the new generation. Scorpio, Uzi, There is everything in Marseille. I know little ones, they are all in Meliana. Drug, armed, flight, clandestine game. Jérôme Piera and Sébastien Thohen reveal the facets of Marseille crime, its territories and its rules. It’s 10:30 p.m. We are heading towards the northern districts of Marseille. Every evening, at the foot of the buildings, The drug business is booming. We got a network to agree to come and film. The condition, not to say where the city is located precisely. It is one of the hotspots for trafficking. At the entrance to the district, we discover a silhouette in the darkness. The lookout. He is 19 years old. His role? Raise the alarm in case of a problem. You,
what are you doing here? After, the coal miner at the entrance to the condés. That is to say,
what are you? What we call the lookouts, there,
is that it? Yes,
that’s it. Oh, you stay here all day? Yeah. From what time to what time do you do this? It depends. There it is… Around 10:00. A little further on, Here is the happiness check. He waits for the customer in front of the entrance of a number. What are you doing here? I am a joy. That’s to say ? I drink from the check. All right. My friend’s life. Do you sell here every day? I’m here from 11am to… And if it’s a customer, he passes? When it’s the police or… When it’s the police, you hear the mohaha and the cutter gives me an AHA sign, the mohaha AHA when does it suck? Yeah,
that’s when it sucks AHA that’s when you hear the mohaha and you think… At the entrance to the district, Our first camera continues to film the lookout. How much do you get paid for doing this? It stays between me and the person. When suddenly, a vehicle he doesn’t know enters the city. A white car. Again ! The alarm is given. The lookout will join the coal miner. If it’s the police, They must hide as quickly as possible. What happened, there,
in fact? They worked in the tree. They beat, but they beat. They beat. And there,
we’re hidden, It’s good,
it’s not bad? No,
it’s fine, It’s okay,
it’s not blocked. False alarm. No one followed them. That’s good,
there, do you think? In case of any problem, dealers can always take refuge in the apartments of accomplices. This cat and mouse game with the police, This is the daily life of the network. In recent years, Drug trafficking has taken root in the northern housing projects. Today, These neighborhoods have become the epicenter of crime. In Marseille, working-class housing estates are concentrated in the northern districts. They spread out from 13th to 16th arrondissements. 250,000 people live there, or a third of the population. A motley habitat made of towers, small buildings and bars, emerged from the ground from the 1950s. A group of social housing units called Les Oliviers has just been inaugurated in Malpassé in the ZUP Nord of Marseille. Planned for 18 months, The project was completed in 15 and a half months. These hastily constructed buildings are designed to absorb the influx of immigrant labor. Fully furnished apartments are presented as progress. They help to clear slums. But these neighborhoods built on the outskirts are very isolated. Public transport is rare. In a few years, These cities take on the appearance of a ghetto. Especially for the youngest who don’t get out. So you didn’t go on vacation? No,
I didn’t leave, but we would like to go there, but it’s too expensive. No,
I’m still in the running. Do you ever think… Sometimes,
but for one day. Do you ever think about your little friends who, They are on vacation? 40 years later, These neighborhoods remain separate. From here, It takes more than an hour to get to the city center. The most emblematic city of the northern districts, the largest, It’s Castellane. 1,300 homes and more than 7,000 residents. La Castellane dates from 1973. It was supposed to be a transit city where people don’t stay. But the closure of factories caused unemployment to explode and forced people to continue living here. Christian is 35 years old. Are you still training? Yeah. He grew up in La Castellane. Amateur boxer, he wants to help the young people in the neighborhood. He dreams of opening a training room here. Be a little champion. How do we know each other? Social center. Social center, what did we do? Boxing. So, can i count on you? Can you count on me? That works. How are you ? Good, You ensure his safety. Because I was new here too. It’s true, you remind me that I have arrived… I was only 9 years old here. Oh yeah? Here, I was fighting, I didn’t know why. But to fight and often win, It gave me a place. A place in this neighborhood. Christian was never involved in drug trafficking. Won’t you say hello to me? What is this? But in his youth, he was seen as the terror of Castellane. You,
will you give Dad a kiss? He went to prison and was even shot. Thanks very much. Here, he knows everyone. For years, he sees poverty increasing. He blames the public authorities for abandoning his neighborhood. We were left to ourselves. What happens happens. We must stop saying that there is social, we must stop saying that there is community policing, All that.
There isn’t! After, the fracture is that to try to manifest itself, to awaken spirits, to make something change, for everyone it appears as a monumental fight, since you already have to pay for your walnut tree, we already have to eat, get dressed, and then you have to start claiming “I am”, “I believe in that”, things like that. What drives you? to invest yourself so much in hair representation or expression. For example, Julien is there. Julian, he has impeccable hair quality. Did you do any tampering? No. There you go,
it’s natural. Yes,
it’s natural. There you go,
now gentlemen, What effort did you go through to have such straight hair? Me?
Yes. Like that. I like to untangle my hair because in the morning it’s all ragged. Stand up for your ideas. It’s threadbare. Christian is worried about the younger ones. How can we offer them a future when one in two adults here is unemployed? We participated in supervising the young people, often the most difficult, because at the time we even took the most difficult ones. And these difficult young people, Why ? They all created their own small businesses, that is to say that the biggest temperaments, the strongest energies, either they invest in marginality, either they succeed and leave the neighborhood, they don’t look back, that’s all. In June 2013, the police seized at Castellane 1,300,000 euros in small bills and 53 kilos of cannabis. Here, as in all the northern districts, the only thriving business, It’s drug trafficking. Day and night, hundreds of customers come to stock up in these neighborhoods. We asked a regular to film for us with a hidden camera. He arrives on foot in a housing project in the 13th arrondissement. At the entrance, the lookout, sitting on a chair, controls the cars. At the bottom of the building, three other lookouts are watching. The deal happens on the stairs. The coal miners actually squatted on the first floor landing. Three chairs serve as a counter. The coal miner gives him a 6 gram bar of cannabis for 30 euros. The transaction takes 30 seconds. Behind, two other customers are waiting their turn. Outlets like this, there are said to be more than a hundred in Marseille. A business that would generate millions of euros per year. Each network follows a hierarchical organization. At the bottom of the ladder, the getter. Above, the coal miner or dealer, the one who sells. They are employed by the manager, who runs the business. At the top, the boss, the one who brings the goods from abroad. The manager of a network located in a housing project in the northern districts agreed to speak to us. He arranges to meet us one evening in the basement of a building. He receives us in a cellar which he considers to be his office. The man is 27 years old. He started in trafficking at the age of 14. From lookout to manager, he climbed all the ladders. He does not see himself as a criminal, but as a trader. Are you a network manager? That’s it, network manager. Can you explain to us what it is like to be a network manager? I’m here and I’m taking care of the network. I’ll take care of the cooling, of payment, of surveillance, entertainment, supplies, of the chidule. Every two hours I come to collect the money. From what time to what time does it take you? A day of meddling work? I take lunch at noon. I serve in the grass. Tomorrow I get up, I’m speaking at the airport tomorrow, from noon to noon. In this story, we were talking about lookouts, the police… The weekend,
I forgot to mention, the weekend at the end of June. Oh yes,
it’s more… The timetables are more… We have a little Saturday night, party night,
we do extras. You run a small business actually, an SME? No,
we’re not going to say little, small,
we’re not going to say small anyway. So above you, What’s the matter?
There’s the network owner, there is the… In its network, There are two dealers and four lookouts. The teams rotate, it’s not always the same. The manager also takes care of personnel management. You,
when you recruit, when you hire, it’s what ? Is it the young people who come to see you? You’re the one who spots guys you… No,
it’s people who come to see me, They are young people from the neighborhood. Well,
it happens to me a lot with people I don’t know. You know,
a friend’s friend. So, when I was 12 years old, It’s the steering wheels. And it turns a lot, the employees? That’s to say, Does it change often? Do you guys, they do that for a while, then after they… Yeah,
yeah, or there are some who come, they want to go on vacation, they need 400, 500 euros, they come, they watch a little, or they live a little, they take his money, They’re going back on vacation. you make money for your friends. And when a customer comes here, You traffic with him, he comes back, is he used to it? The manager now shows us the bag. that he gives to the dealer for his day’s work. This is what we call the famous satchel. In this bag, everything is ready for sale. Individual doses are placed in plastic bags. So what is this? Are these 50 euro bags? So you on it, What did you mark? How much did you score? That’s the 300 cover. Above, The manager wrote down the amount that the dealer would have to pay him. So that’s the hash, So this is the grass and this is the hash. On the table, about ten bags, each worth 200 to 300 euros. Be careful not to break it, though. otherwise you will have to seduce him. All right, Yes. All merchandise touched is purchased? Any hidden merchandise, hidden, is purchased. Touched,
still, That.
Okay. What is this? Is it for one day? How long is it for? No,
it’s not for the day, it lasts a little longer than… Two o’clock,
three o’clock. That’s for the next 3 hours. So that’s basically what you’re going to give to the dealer. I’ll give it to him there, that it will end up on a garment. So if that’s for 2 hours, How many do you sell per day? Normally I sell lighthouse, but we will say that we will find it between 12,000 and 13,000 euros. The day? During the day,
yes. In his bag, kilos of goods that he still has to prepare. Oh yeah,
that’s for tonight’s coal miner. So how much is in the bag? 6 and a half kilos of cannabis. Plus what’s on the table. In all, There are more than 20,000 euros worth here. As in a society, the manager is interested in turnover. The more it works, at most it is paid. Let’s say that I’m making mountains out of 2,9000 euros. Without overdoing it.
Yeah, without taxes,
without anything. Without taxes, without anything. According to the penal code, The manager faces up to 30 years in prison as an executor of an organized drug trafficking gang. He knows he’s playing for big money, but there is no question of him stopping. The end of the gain is too big. Money, This is the motivation of all those who enter the networks. But few hit the jackpot. We went to see the little hands of traffic. The dealers, the getters, those for whom working in a network is more like survival. We meet a coal miner, in the middle of preparing his merchandise. What are you up to here? There,
these are pieces at 10. At 10 euros? Yeah. He himself cuts the pieces of cannabis resin that he will sell. I will try to do 2-3 pieces at 30. I dropped out of school, I had 14-15 years old, There. I tried to do some training, It didn’t work. And there you have it, I found this, I started selling sheets. For people, and from there, I didn’t let go of the piece. So far, I’m 24. And frankly, It’s not easy. A coal miner like him earns between 100 and 200 euros a day. Over the past ten years, He worked in several networks in the northern districts. It’s easier to find a place to mine coal than to find work, that’s for sure. Why are they always looking for people to work for them? They are not looking, It’s you who’s looking. It’s us, It’s the lack of money. To charcoal, you don’t need a diploma to go to work, to go to a black neighborhood to coal any one. If you want to sell, You know the risks very well. It’s a job that is considered normal, well, rather banal. It’s not a job, It’s a pain. It is a galley considered banal, Yeah. Today, He would like to leave this mess and find a real job. Yeah, Yeah,
I’m fed up because it doesn’t bring in much money. Apart from prison and a little survival. It’s survival. Otherwise, if there were better things to do, be like you behind the camera, I would do it. That means, take your joint, smoke it if you are a smoker. And go to work. I’m not bothering you. Have you been to prison? No,
no. So far, How’s it going. That’s why, I should stop as soon as possible before… Because that’s it, I’ve already spent my time. As a seller, He can be sentenced to a maximum of 5 years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros. But the risk is no longer just getting caught by the police. Today… It’s also about getting shot. Marseille, shaken by the settling of scores. Last night, It was using this same method that she was shot dead… In Marseille, Competition between networks is causing deaths. By the dozens. Since 2009, More than 70 young people were shot dead. Settling scores with weapons of war. In 2010, a shooting leaves its mark. It takes place in the heart of this city in the 13th arrondissement, the Clos-la-Rose. Jean-Michel, said Michou, a 16-year-old lookout, is shot. At the foot of a building in this northern city of Marseille, dozens of shell casings. It bears witness to the violence of these settling of scores with heavy weapons. Last night, around 10 p.m., two cars stop at the foot of these buildings. Five hooded men, armed with Kalashnikovs, open fire. In the neighborhoods… The lookouts are on the front line. They are the ones we see most on the field. Since they have no goods and are often minors, They enjoy virtual impunity before the courts. But the Clos-la-Rose shooting shows that they can become targets. A young 16-year-old lookout, also from the 13th arrondissement, agrees to talk to us about his daily life and his fears. He joined a network a year ago, after leaving school. He earns between 60 and 120 euros per day. Is it you, as a lookout, even if you are at the bottom of the network ladder, Do you have responsibilities? If you miss a signal, What do they tell you? Are you being punished? Are you being judged? What are you? I have big responsibilities. If,
for example, I miss the civilians and they take the seller, It’s up to me to pay all that back. We do not reimburse directly, we work for them. For free? For free, There. Like dogs. Your loved ones, Do they know you’re a lookout? No,
my family, they don’t know. Maybe my cousin, my cousin knows, My uncle knows. But your cousin and your uncle, What do they say? They don’t tell me anything, They’ve been there too. But do you want to take the next steps? Do you want to be a manager? You want to be… It’s better. It’s better to be a manager because you get more money. But you can get a job and stop all that. Because there is a big risk in all of this. Go ahead, take the risks. You, What are you afraid of today? It’s scary to die young. I am 16 years old. And a lookout, can he die? He can. Yes,
he can die. If,
for example, the network is at war with the other, it kills you directly. This surge in violence is explained by the proliferation of drug networks. Between them, competition is wreaking havoc. Jacques Dalleste is a public prosecutor. He has just spent 5 years in Marseille. He saw the networks take up arms, firstly to defend a very lucrative business. Suddenly, you have nothing and you can brew everything 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 euros in cash. Right away, People go crazy seeing so much money so easily earned. And when you have money and camera, you’re going to be a target because you’re a safe. And you can be attacked to steal your money, to steal your merchandise. So already, this type of crime, of delinquency arouses covetousness. The prosecutor saw the settling of scores using weapons of war begin in 2009. From, It’s climbing. The neighborhood thugs no longer hesitate to draw their guns. between those who have stolen each other’s territory, those who are incarcerated and who will order an assassination from their prison saying “he took my place, we kill him” , the one who comes out of prison. Saying now I take my place again, we’re going to kill him, because it will hinder the buyer, It’s a bit like an economic activity, there is a small business, there is a buyer, there is a market, there are customers, except that the competition is settled with a gun and nothing else, not before a commercial court. And that’s what struck me during those years in Marseille, is that most of the victims were the youngest season, the Clos-Larose affair. The average is 20, 21 years old, 25 years old, rarely above 25 years old. So young people, and we can assume that the killers are also young. These young people are not part of organized crime. And yet, They use these expeditious methods. A new settling of scores in Marseille circles. Last night, Three bodies were found in a burnt-out car. The three bodies? was installed in the back seat of the vehicle. An Audi A3 was found completely burnt out last night. The roof had to be cut open to extract the bodies. It was an execution. The autopsy revealed that the bodies were riddled with bullets. The car was burned to erase DNA traces. In the middle, We call it the barbecue technique. The victims, three young people. Sonny, 20 years old. His cousin Mohamed, 19 years old. And their friend fed. 20 years old. All three come from a small city in the northern suburbs. The Hackberry Trees. Here, no 20-story tower. Small buildings in the greenery. A seemingly quiet residence, just disturbed by the song of the cicadas. We find Nadia there, the mother of one of the three executed youths. She has lived here for almost 20 years. She was raised there alone, his two sons and his daughter. It’s pretty, it’s beautiful, it’s green, but it’s completely rotten. There is a rotten core. Because here, despite appearances, Drug trafficking is undermining the city. A network has been set up in the heart of the Micocouliers. I fell into a trap, Really. This is a trap. And as long as these networks don’t stop, I don’t think it will get better. At the start, The mother does not understand where the danger comes from. When they are about ten years old, his son Soni and his nephew Mohamed are approached by older people. It starts with gifts. From a very young age, He’s already spoiled them for me. So he patted them, he offered them a pair of sneakers. So for them, they were great lords, all these people, all these great people who offered them, who offered them everything, who paid them everything. Me. When they started buying things from them, I said to myself, They are good people, That,
they are nice. They want… They saw that I was alone, that I wasn’t working, that I was alone with my children. But it was after that I understood. It’s after. When I saw that my son, afterwards,
he didn’t come home in the evening, that he stayed too long and was still with them, They brigaded him. Sonny left school at 15. He enters the network as a lookout, then becomes a dealer. At 17 years old, He was arrested and spent two years in prison. Upon its release, he has ambition. The Micocouliers network is run by a team from a neighboring neighborhood. Bassens. Sonny doesn’t want to work for them anymore. He wants to run the business in his city. A provocation for the Bassens guys. A day, my son, he came to catch me, he said to me “mom”. Sit down, I’m going to tell you something, but don’t panic. Don’t panic, What’s going on my son? I fought with a guy, and this guy put a contract out on me. To know 150,000 euros. He told me that so-and-so came to warn me. He said beware, there’s a contract on you. Three weeks later, Christmas Day. Sony and his two friends have a meeting to buy cannabis in bulk. They must find their supplier in this disused school in Bassins. It’s an ambush. Sony, Mohamed and Nourie are shot dead, then their bodies are burned. Four suspects have been arrested for the murders. The women of the Bassens city, They are close to Sonny and his family. Some of them, I hosted them. I hosted them, they came home to me, they ate at my house, they slept at my house, these people. And when you think that people so close can commit such horrible acts, I can’t imagine it. It’s too hard, too too too hard. To imagine what they did, do you realize? Set fire, Why are they setting fire? Why burn bodies? They don’t think about families. The attitude, They take children like that. Families, they don’t think, the mothers. I’m not the only one in this state. I’m not the only one in this situation. There are several, several mothers like that who… Today, Nadia would like to leave the neighborhood. She is afraid for her other children. She asked to be rehoused, far from here. In 2013, 20 young people were shot dead in Marseille. A massacre facilitated by the massive arrival of weapons of war in the northern districts. For several years now, Getting hold of an automatic pistol or a Kalashnikov is no longer reserved for the big names in banditry. How do these weapons get to Marseille? Is it as easy as they say to find some? To find out, We are going to try to buy a Kalashnikov. Our contacts suggest we meet a man who acts as an intermediary. He is suspicious. After two failed dates, he agrees to see us. But far from his city. Hi, Well, and you ? Our idea is to see how we can get weapons. If it’s simple, not easy. Simple is never simple, but good. I have the right contact, I have guys who bring that back. I can have Scorpios, Puget Trailer, Bazookas, Kalash. Kalashnikovs? Well, we would like to, to be honest we would like to buy Kalashnikovs, to have a little, it’s easy to have, That’s the idea anyway. Yeah yeah, This is the contact that is needed. And how long do you think it takes to get a… Less than 15 days old, 3 weeks. 15 days, 3 weeks? 15 days. And how much is it worth? There were 2500, 3000 euros. 2500, 3000 euros. And with that we have the balls, we have everything… That’s pretty much the point. And we, the guy we’re going to see, Who is it exactly? It’s a contact I have with a guy who would do tours of the neighborhood, who would make a Marseille. I’ll put you in touch, you see with him. All right. Well, hello. We will have to wait more than a month before getting an appointment with the seller. The price of the Kalashnikov will have to be paid in cash, or 3000 euros. One evening, he receives us in a box, somewhere in the northern districts. I see you have the tool, the machine. The baby.
The baby, Yeah.
A family bag. Yeah, it beats them. Loaded. A boy.
A boy. They are stocked there, Yeah.
Yeah. Cheap,
it’s not too expensive. This Kalashnikov comes from a country in the former Yugoslavia. This is the origin of most of the war weapons that arrive clandestinely in France. This seller never goes to the Balkans himself. He is the last link in a chain. Me, I’m not going that far. You’re not going? I’m going to pick up people who live in Africa. Once it gets to about the strawberry, we are here. With everything that’s going on, Does it still happen quite easily? That is to say, there is no police pressure? It’s not more than… It’s a little bit hard. It’s like I’m going through baths in a vice. It’s a bit hard. But here it is, It’s normal. Either you sell or you don’t take any. How does it come back? In converted vehicles, stuff like that? No,
I’m asking too much of you, you can’t tell me. All right, Good. It is a weapon of war. Can we find other weapons of war in Marseille? Hold, Scorpio,
over to you. There you bring me 3000 euros, I’ll bring you a micro-factory. You throw me 43, I’ll bring it to you. Anyway if I tried, there is one of us who is… The man started selling weapons four years ago. He acknowledges that at this moment, he has trouble coping with life. How do you work? Is it made to order? That is, you have a stock or… From time to time, I have a stock,
as from time to time, It’s actually on order. Because sometimes, we don’t think of it for everyone. We get asked. Yeah,
there’s a big demand. We are lost walking, the two women. Everyone receives the vacuum. It’s killing itself,
we’re filming. Before,
I would get one for 1,500. Afterwards,
it increased to 2,000, 2,500, now 3,000. It’s going fast. And the person, she is in a hurry, I really want to go further, I really want to do what needs to be done. And there you have it.
In fact, you hang on, you are someone. Oh yeah,
okay. You are alone in the game with you. It’s sure that guys, you can water. Customers who buy this from you, What’s that?
Are they just guys into drugs? They’re just drug dealers, almost? It depends, sometimes, there is one that is not templed, maybe he makes me a caliber, I’ll give you some air. Yes,
and anyway, you don’t ask yourself why. Do you plan to do this for a long time? I don’t always have enough money to go and shoot myself out of the sky. I’m getting dressed there with my… …My… …Marseilles, That. With a ticket that goes on my side. Like him, There are about ten people in Marseille selling weapons of war. He faces 7 to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 500,000 euros. Can you shoot? It’s not going away. Can you make me a kitten? Yeah, Yeah.
No, I can’t do what, It’s not true. We have to destroy it. Oh yes,
we see it marked with the 47. Now that the Kalashnikov belongs to us, we decide to make it unusable. There is no question of putting this weapon back into circulation. We are now looking to meet a typical customer for these war weapons. The lookouts, the dealers, are generally not armed. The calibers are requested above. The man is 30 years old. He is the head of a network. He has just received a Kalashnikov. Flame in operation. It is the favorite weapon of thugs. No need to be a good shooter. With 600 strokes per minute, impossible to miss your target. Is this a real one? Yeah,
yeah, It’s a real one. You see, there is everything you need. There,
you send yourself one like that, my guy. You don’t get up. With that, you water everyone. And there,
it’s going to be dirty. He runs away again, direct. Straight away,
he’ll be direct, nor chest, neither this,
nor that. He’s not joking. So really, we have to get this out. There are real problems. They confirm to us that the weapons have been in the neighborhoods for several years. What has changed, It’s that guys no longer hesitate to use it. Before, everyone wanted to have their own little calache at home, history of… warm, all this,
more to impress. NOW, It’s not like before. You don’t hear about him anymore at the calache, you hear him pull it, him shock another one, it’s not the same anymore, It’s not like it was 10 years ago. Today, when you’re in the networks, they send you one. It’s like a cop. Today, there is his flashball, his taser. And now, we have calaches in the air. Me,
it’s not my goal to go around shooting people. You know, I have morals anyway. When I’m there, I’m hungry,
I’m worried, that’s all. And to eliminate competitors without getting your hands dirty, It is possible to call on neighborhood boys who play hitmen. If you don’t want to rack your brains, you give them 70, 80 miles, he goes there with the tanks, the guy. He says everything chard. Oh yes,
there are people here who are ready to sell themselves. Yeah,
they’re ready to sell out. They are all crazy. They all want money, They are ready for anything. It seems like there are no more rules with these… It’s a mess. You will keep yourself in Marseille, Huh.
You’re not… I don’t have the right. Despite the 20 annual deaths, networks that change hands, arrests by the police, The drug business continues and there seems to be no shortage of cannabis in the housing projects of Marseille. Because above the networks, there are teams of wholesalers who, from Spain, send tons of cannabis into the neighborhoods. Spain, It is the gateway to Moroccan hashish. We have an appointment in Barcelona with one of these wholesalers. We’ll call him Sergio. This Marseillais settled here 3 years ago. He joined the big French traffickers who send drugs without worrying about bloody settling of scores. Me,
I’m a fat guy in Marseille. I hope until Marseille, to my associates. Why Spain? What’s happening in Spain? Spain is the supermarket, it’s the tower, the sun, the sea, the brothels… That’s what I mean. We are not far from Morocco, we can get as much as we want, there are fewer risks. If I get caught, I wouldn’t get the same punishment as in France. Let’s say, here I would do 5 years, whereas in France I would do 10 years. Every month, Sergio is said to be sending more than 200 kilos of hashish to Marseille and the surrounding area. I supply my network and I supply other networks too. Can you sell to other networks? Yes of course. Because not everyone has access to the source here? No, if I don’t have contact, I don’t have a source. So there are people, you,
smaller networks, I imagine? It hurts to buy hash from me. They have to go through me or other people, you see what i mean? How do you ship hashish to Marseille? We don’t do it again. I’ll show you how to do it later. Sergio takes us on board. Heading to the suburbs of Barcelona, in a small neighborhood garage. Once there, We discover the car used to transport the hash to Marseille. In appearance, a family sedan like any other. In reality, It is full of hiding places. so there we are in fact we are under the trunk on the trunk and there what we see is what is the road on the trunk how much can we put it in there? We’ll bring out the truck for you, it weighs 5 kilos. With a lover. It is made with iron fiber. And there’s another hiding place in the car? There’s another hideout inside. Same system at the front of the car. Behind the bumper, three other hiding places. Fitting out a car like this is complex and expensive. Sergio bought it turnkey from a team that took care of all its transformations. This is the front cage, Is that it?
This is the front cage. And how much can we put in there? 80 kilos. It’s made in Spain, It was a friend who sold it to me, He was the one who installed it for me, you see. How much is a car like that worth? 40 kilos. Nothing but transformation, How much is it worth? 20,000 euros. It’s more discreet than GoFace, That.
Of course. Once the car is loaded, Sergio recruits mules, that is to say, smugglers, who will bring her back to Marseille. Who drives this kind of car, Who are you asking? Whether it’s couples, young people, but no cameras. To perhaps say… To avoid having a smeared face. The customs officers, what they see first, they see a couple, they say, It’s a couple. While there, if there are going to be two young people, four young people in a car, burned live. So that the person does not pass well, That’s all the calculations. And how much they are paid, So,
people? Between 4,000 and 5,000 euros. For both people, for the couple, It’s 4,000 to 5,000 euros in total? In all. For every journey. And they,
do they know exactly what’s in it? No. And when the car goes back down to Spain from Marseille, she does not make the trip empty. In these same hiding places, She brings in the trafficking money for the bosses. Return to Marseille. North of the city, in the middle of the cities, there is a separate territory. A gypsy neighborhood whose thugs specialize in theft. His name? The Mirabeau stream. It is stuck between the motorway and the TGV line. 500 people live there. Two years ago, A team of thieves from this neighborhood made headlines. On November 27, 2011, burglars are being chased by the police, after the robbery of a supermarket. A shootout breaks out. A police officer was shot three times with a Kalashnikov and one of the robbers was killed. In this burglary, it is the disproportion between the means employed by the criminals and this meager booty, a few bags of frozen products for which they did not hesitate to shoot police officers with a Kalashnikov, a weapon of war. The robber killed was from the Mirabeau stream, like his alleged accomplices who were subsequently arrested. This neighborhood was born more than… 50 years old, with the settlement of gypsy families. They came with their caravans. They were recovering metals for the surrounding factories. In the 70s, The city buys the land and houses the families in these small permanent pavilions. The caravans are still there, but the population is sedentary. Today, the Mirabeau stream, surrounded by a wall, has the appearance of a secluded body. It is known as the most feared district of Marseille. No one dares to enter without being invited. But thanks to our contacts, We get the green light to film in the neighborhood. Here, there is no trade, nor school. Traditional metal recovery activity is declining. Unemployment has reached a record rate of over 90%. The first person who agrees to tell us about the neighborhood, It’s Grandpa. He was born at Mirabeau stream. Have you always lived here? We live in caravans, in the camp. We live in the barrains, like there. And after, we came here. Next to his pavilion, he kept his caravan, where he sleeps from time to time. So. This is our life, That. Is this the second home? This is the second home, yeah.
Back in the day, we were traveling. But then we were there. Okay,
hello, I am…
The reputation of the Mirabeau stream, It’s about sheltering a lot of thugs. Especially thieves. Grandpa himself gave a little present. Why does the neighborhood have this reputation? Because we were… That’s all, it was a full house. We were… What were you? We were little cabouloirages, bullshit like that, Did you see?
Young people, we were looking for money. And after, there are worse things. You have the city which is above. There Castellane? The Castellane. The basins, the spines, the green francs. Because there, there is nothing else. Because what is happening around, we are nothing at all. You are the angels from there. We are angels, It’s true.
It looks like a lot of closet space, the young people here? Are they all in the closet? Yes, They’re all down there. Ah,
they’re all here. Effectively, in the neighborhood, we come across few young adults. We mostly see children, women and some elders. They’re bringing our girlfriends back. But that,
for our girlfriends, They are afraid to come back here. Because they say the gypsies will eat us, It’s paving stones and everything. It’s a real name! It’s not true! We’re just hot guys! Only handsome guys, plus he’s a big kid! What handsome guys! Girls, we make them crack! How do you explain that we feel that it’s complicated to get in if we don’t know anyone? Do you find that normal? Yes,
that’s normal. The Granules taught us that. There was a name of the smaller proof. No one should enter the neighborhood, It must stay between us. But how come, no one should come in? The authorities, people who are not from the neighborhood? The police, All. They are suspicious of everything. They are suspicious of everything, we don’t confide in anyone. Because here it is, Most of them are thieves. They don’t want the police to come in. They tell us that, pooh, and we do it. So it’s a neighborhood that has its reputation, which is sometimes unjustified. There you go,
yeah. You have to say it like that. Regularly, Police target gangs of neighborhood thugs. But since it is impossible to return to the Mirabeau stream without being spotted, The police are watching from outside. He gets all the police to film, eh ? On the hill, up there,
there. Last time, there was a microphone. There was a chambermaid. We tore it off, we join. The camera was blown up. Facing our camera, young people are showing off. This is the village of Gauls. They are making breakfast. They are proud to explain to us how they defend their neighborhood against the police. What is this actually? It is a grout manipulation ring. BZ,
AVC, AZH,
ABK. We stone them. We stone them. The stones us, we don’t go in, I come back here, They know they are dead. The hers, the hers, we made hers We made hers we When it comes in, when it goes around And we go towards an inside, like we put it just below and when it passes, he’s dying in the mud So there are no drugs here, there is no weapon, There’s no…
There’s no lady There is no lady You don’t know that? No So that means no then? No That day, we will only see teenagers. We’ll have to come back a few days later to meet some real thugs. The men who are going to speak to us have all had dealings with the law. They tell us about the cases they have been involved in in the past. Mario is 26 years old. He has just spent nearly 10 years in prison for violent car theft. There was car traffic at the time. How hard it was for us, here,
who never had and everything, we just made ourselves… We still have something to eat. As the Arabs bought cars from us, we have cars for the major. At the time, You had to hit people to take the cars. Did you have to hit people? Yeah.
For me, It was to take the car and go home. Afterwards,
if we look at the tower, It’s still serious. But hey,
it’s over now. And then I paid for it. And you forgot to say something. Yeah.
Stealing isn’t illegal. It’s forbidden, it can catch up. There,
it’s true. Are there many boys from here? Have you been to prison? Yeah, we all went. We are all in prison. Well,
there, There are a good number of them coming out under the umbrella. The oldest do not contradict this. They too admit to having had a delinquent youth. Him,
for example, robbed jewelry stores by smashing the fronts. The main gate, It was the showcase. Oh yes, that is to say, to burglarize the thing, all you had to do was smash the window and get into the… With the manhole covers, all that. Let’s do that. You,
you are… How old are you? you, sir? 64. 64? Oh yeah, so you’re still the… You are the eldest, here.
I have one from before, Actually.
I have one from before. Did you go to prison when you were 20? I did. A lot ? A lot, a lot. What is a lot? Years, years. Years in prison? What did you fall for? For flights, flights. Today, They all say they have passed the baton. They do not identify with the crime in the northern districts with these bloody settling of scores. Young people aged 14 and 15, they can kill you. There are no more men, That’s all over. There was more respect. Oh yeah,
respect, there was more respect. They were men before. NOW, there is no one left. It’s the little ones, it’s the thugs, It’s the little ones. It’s the young people. These men are nostalgic for old-fashioned banditry, when gypsy thugs rubbed shoulders with Corsicans or Italians. Can the explosion of violence in the northern districts today be explained by the disappearance of the traditional environment? Historically, the middle territory, This is the city center. These ancient villages which border the old port. Slot machines and rackets, The thugs here are old school. The districts of Andoum, The Opera and Panier districts have been hotbeds of organized crime for a century. The bigwigs regularly feed the news section. Surely a bloody settling of scores in the heart of Marseille this morning around 9 a.m., Roland Gaben, 46 years old, strong man from the Marseille milieu, was shot dead by hooded individuals. The basket boss, his nickname was attached to organized crime. He was known to the police for theft, robberies and pimping. Two years ago, The execution of the basket boss is the epilogue of a long criminal story. A man who knew the great Marseille milieu well, Paul Nery. At 80 years old, He served 26 years in prison for robbery. His neighborhood, Andoum, at the foot of the good sea. Paul Nery earned his stripes as a crook in the 1950s. At the time, before going to rob banks, you had to do your apprenticeship first. So the start was for example a motorcycle theft, after the car theft, after that we were going to make warehouses with the cars, there were clothes, things, and then we went shopping. Afterwards, so that there is a little more money, a jewelry store window was broken, we had to act quickly there, so we each took it quickly, but in the mind of a young person… It was the robbery. When we got there, to the robbery, the guy had self-control, he had a kind of CAP, What, A Parallel CAP. Freshly graduated, Paul Néry becomes a pro at bank robbery. He made a career without ever having to fire a shot. Nothing to do with what is happening today in the northern districts. From what I read and what I learn through the media, They are generally young people. They wanted to run, since with the hood, the calims, etc. They wanted to run before taking a market. Before,
we didn’t see that. People were structured before. Each had a specialty. The only person I know well, It’s me. I am over 80 years old, I was well structured, since I have no acts of violence, I don’t have blood on my hands. So I went to the right school. Even more than in Doum, the nursery of the Marseille environment, It’s the famous basket on the other side of the Old Port. Today, The basket is the favorite destination of tourists. This is where the Mucem is located, the new Museum of Civilizations. The favorite neighborhood of the bobos served as a model for the soap operas Plus Belle La Vie. But these alleys first saw the growth of the biggest crooks of the Italian Corso milieu. We find one of them there today. There,
you have a view of all of Marseille, Finally, of the port, all that, over there,
you see. This is the basket. Joe Signoli was born to an Italian father and a Corsican mother. He is a pure product of the basket. Ah, well, here we go. I lived there. I grew up partly on this street. My father, when he reached the age of 14, he came, he settled here. Well,
he got married in the neighborhood and… And let’s say that in this neighborhood, from the basket, It was a bit of a reflection of today’s northern districts, but with less violence. Joe Signoli joined the Navy at age 16. He starts with small-scale trafficking, alcohol and cigarettes. In the 60s, he abandons the uniform. He continues his rise in the industry. Joe joins the exclusive club of traffickers of the famous French Connection. This industry that processes and sends heroin to the New York mafia. You know that at the time, only 3 or 4 teams doing that, there weren’t 50 of them. Good, there were those who brought the goods from Türkiye or elsewhere, which gave to transform, and then there were those who took him to the United States, like me. And in Marseille, we didn’t sell a gram of heroin. I’ve never sold a gram of heroin in France. I transported it to the United States, but in France, I wasn’t selling anything. In 1972, Joe Signoli is arrested. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He falls into the affair of Etan’s Caprice, a shrimp boat transporting 450 kg of heroin to the United States. At the time of the French Connection, There were obviously scores to settle in Marseille. But some thugs kept order there. At the time, I don’t mean godfathers, but at the time they were men in place, that they were often called upon when there were problems, They were a bit like the justice of the peace. So there were these people who dominated the streets in Marseille, and it is obvious that they did everything to prevent these people, by being thugs, become. What I’m telling you is complex. It’s paradoxical, but that’s how it is. There are people… I’ve always been a good person. I have always tried to avoid problems like this, to eliminate people, to kill. But in the northern canteens, there is no one who does not master anyone. You are no longer in control. Even these people will turn around. When you’re going to step in and pass on our good words or whatever, they are able to tell you “take care of yourself” and then it’s not happy, even to you, to pressure you to say what I want to say. In the basket, unlike the northern districts, men would still have some authority on the street. Roland Gabin, a restaurateur, was nicknamed the godfather of the basket. He owned several bars and nightspots. He was also listed as a major criminal. In July 2011, It is executed in the street. Gabin was a respected figure in his neighborhood. He knew how to make himself appreciated, even the oldest. He had a positive image here. A big little one, what, even,
who was getting old for us, it was the little one. All right, the little one from the neighborhood. He had gentle eyes, tender eyes, not bad. Maybe in the evening, It must have been mean to get respect too. But towards us, I don’t know. He had no right to do it. If we had something, on the contrary, he protected us. The brave boy still had a dark side and a long criminal record. One of his traveling companions… agrees to tell us about his criminal journey. You,
you knew well Roland Gabin. Yes, absolutely. Who was it, Roland Gabin? He was nicknamed… The basket boss. That was it. There is no other concern, he was the basket boss. For at least 25 years. First arrest at 17. For robbery. There,
he was sentenced to 11 years in prison. In prison, he builds his reputation. That is to say a boss, afraid of no one, alone,
no team, he is alone, It’s Roland, It’s Gabin from the basket, he needs damage, nor even the thugs who are in prison with him. When he gets out of prison, he has become the essential boss. He had balls as big as Alaska. An anecdote, one day he is summoned, he is in the patent, he is in prison, he is summoned by a judge on a case. He closed the breakdown, they will look for her, he had sewn his mouth shut. He had his mouth sewn shut. He arrived before the judge, The judge had him locked up. You can put it back together. That’s what Roland Gavé was. So when we say that he was the boss or the godfather of the basket, as we read in the press, What does that mean? He was a partner in the money business, slot machines, the various traffics, he was associated with a little bit of everything. He had a bit of drug dealing, Finally,
everything that is inherent to a basic crook. And then this photo there, when was this taken? It’s Basket Day in 2011, a month before he died. This is the last photo I think he took. He is in front of the restaurant, it’s a little further towards there. Is this the restaurant he had? Yeah,
the little restaurant where he did the aperitifs from the basket. The basket aperitifs were held every week, in the summer season. A very popular meeting place for the people of Marseille. Since Gabin’s death, a new sponsor has taken over. We are looking to meet one of his former associates. His name appears alongside Gabin in a racketeering case. He is nicknamed Titus. He has a restaurant in the heart of the basket. We decide to go and ask him some questions. Good morning. If you disturb me, I wanted to know if I could speak to Titus, at XSR. Can I talk to you for two seconds? Is this the only one? Yeah. So I’ll explain to you, I work for Canal+. I’m doing a report on Roland Gabin. I know he’s your friend, you knew him well. I’m going to let you come and see because we wanted to talk about him. I wanted to know if you could interview yourself, talk with you. No,
you’re welcome. There are no interviews to be done. You will say that in the chip from me, from us, we must stop saying that the basket has collapsed, I don’t know, he has disbanded, that he is more interested in people who tear off sea bags, and who don’t come and bother us, there is no story. It is precisely to tell the truth about Roland, he was the godfather… There is no truth to tell you, what do you mean? There is no truth to tell you, there is no godfather, the sailors, it doesn’t exist, It’s all ephemeral. If you want to have information, keep the police right next door, you go,
you ask them, They will give you information. Who’s following you? I’m doing a report on it, and I wanted to talk about him, it was considered the… The godfather of the basket, It’s not by chance. His pedigree, he is… I know you worked with him. You were his right-hand man. You were his friend, at least. I prefer to talk to people who knew him than to talk to… If you want, you eat a piece. You go to a restaurant. You have the basket, you visit. Right, you have life. You have the molded man, If you want. You have life charity. If you want to come and have a drink, there is no problem. Don’t ask me about Roland, please. OK? The midfielder is discreet at the basket. What about the Opera? A neighborhood where the thugs flaunted themselves without complexes and conducted their business. Here, It was the headquarters of the environment. There were the thug bars, their boxes, their brothels and lots of girls on the sidewalks. Today… There are still a few bars left at Hostess. But girls are rarer. A news item suggests a redistribution of the cards. Are the new thugs from the northern districts looking to establish themselves in the city center? In May 2012, A Corsican restaurant is partly destroyed by arson. He belongs to a middle figure, Jacques Cassandry. Listed as a serious criminal for 25 years, He is suspected of being the mastermind of the Nice robbery. He spent several periods in prison. The burning of his restaurant is seen as an act of intimidation. We decide to call Jacques Cassandry directly to get a reaction from him. Hello ? Hello, Mr. Cassandry? Yes ? Good morning, Jérôme Piera for Canal+. Ah. I wanted to know if we could interview you, finally,
you want to meet above all, to talk about one of your establishments. Ah. All right. And what is it, That?
And which establishment? After discussion, he agrees to meet us. We’ll be right there. Thank you.
For the first time, he agrees to speak in front of a camera. Ah, that’s good. Jacques Cassandry welcomes us to the sound of guitars, the famous Corsican cabaret that belongs to him. Hello.
Hello. Mr. Cassandry. Hello Sir. Good morning. Did you call me? Yes, it’s us. Good morning. This is Antoine, channel A+. Jacques Cassandry. Jerome Piera. Can we tell you about yourself? Here listen, to be frank, we read from right to left, We heard in the media that you had problems with one of your establishments, you would have been pressured to sell it. Is that what you weren’t talking about? No, but indeed, All establishments in Marseille are experiencing problems. At some point, we always have little problems, maybe to the drink or something. But real problems that are related to me, my character, I don’t know any. I don’t have any. I have no difference with anyone. There, that’s clear. Good depression, I don’t suffer obviously. Yes,
basically, to be clear, people said it was the big shots, what we call the bosses of the northern districts, who were putting pressure on the city center establishments to take over. No, no way. I would have been gone a long time ago if I suffered from depression. I’m not under any pressure. I’m really in my element. Jacques Cassandre assures us that he is a simple trader, a bar and restaurant owner, like another. Me, I haven’t done anything for 30 years, that I keep quiet, that I work, I see a lot of evil, my family too. SO, I don’t see how I can bring an interest that would be linked to my past or anything else. It’s related to current events, everything that happens today, Is there a change in the gap between the people who were in the city center in Marseille? The particular activity, the people of the North Quarter… The problems, they are not there. The problems, they are elsewhere. You see, every day, kids killing each other, These are problems. That’s where the problems lie. Well, gentlemen, I’m sorry, but… So. I think I’ve answered your questions. Are you satisfied? Today… Traditional banditry is on the decline. The novelty, It’s that the crooks are putting on the costume of businessmen. They invest in the legal economy. They would divert, For example, money from public contracts. A scandal brought it to light. The Guérini affair. Being the president of the general council of Bouches-du-Rhône and seeing his brother, business leader, indicted in a case of fraudulent public procurement, necessarily, It gives orders. The president of the general council… Jean-Noël Guérini and his brother Alexandre, business leader, are now under investigation for criminal conspiracy. According to justice, they allegedly awarded construction contracts to construction companies linked to Michel Campanella and Bernard Barézy, here on the right. Both are listed as serious criminals. These two men are suspected of having fraudulently obtained construction contracts financed by the Bouches-du-Rhône General Council. The ABT company based in Gardanne, whose bosses are said to be close to organized crime, particularly Bernard Barézy. This case would reveal illegal practices at the head of the Bouches du Rhône department. The general council, as it has a budget of 2 and a half billion, he has a lot of satellite companies and he has a lot of power and so… From the General Council, We arrive at a myriad of companies where there is suspicion that organized crime has tried to interfere and steal public money. SO, after the accommodations, after the construction markets, now we have port management, which are obviously very profitable. In these matters, tens of millions of euros are at stake. We are attacking the public market, quite simply… Because it is very profitable, There is still a lot of public money and we risk much less. We invest much less money and we have a return on investment that is much greater and we risk much fewer years in prison. SO, I’ll tell you, white-collar crime, It is still much more profitable than drug trafficking, which involves physical risks for those who practice it. If the traditional environment has abandoned drug trafficking, now in the hands of the neighborhood thugs, there is a round that he would find difficult to abandon, that of illegal gambling. In France, Gambling is strictly regulated. Gambling for money is only possible at the casino. In Marseille, clandestine parties are organized almost every evening. We manage to get invited to one of them. The game takes place in the back room of a bar. We play barboute there, the local specialty, never filmed until today. The principle, a pair of… to be thrown into a long wooden box nicknamed the coffin. Players bet on winning combinations. Around the coffin, boys from the city center and the neighborhoods. Our camera is tolerated, but impossible to ask questions. Here, we can play very big. This player has 2,000 euros in hand. And that evening, another will lose his car. The big fashion right now, the most profitable game, It’s poker. A private party organizer, as they are called, agrees to receive us. He organizes 4 of them per week in a restaurant. The iron curtain is drawn, the game takes place out of sight. It’s not the breasts. That’s a beautiful magic trick. Like in a casino, there is a cashier, dealers and the games are played with throwers. So here it is, what they do, we are not interested. We,
what they count, It’s about playing and there’s money. This is the best. Come on, gentlemen, it’s at… Lacarra. Each game has around ten players. They come from all over the region. They are notified by SMS. The game starts at 10pm and can last a very long time. As casinos close at 2 a.m., there,
you can play until… not 2 hours, What?
You can play for 24 hours. The parties, It’s a minimum of 3-hour games. It can last one night, one day, a third. Here,
to be accepted, Do you have to bet a lot or how does it work? In a game like ours, you must have at least 2-3,000 euros to be able to play. And how much can it go up to? It can go up a lot, a lot of additions. There may be big losses. Or big wins. Or big wins, Of course. If there are losses, there are gains. On average. An underground poker game like this can raise up to 100,000 euros. The organizer receives several thousand euros per evening. In order to avoid confusion and bad payers, a somewhat special security service is required. A team of seasoned thugs who ensure the protection of the game. A great tradition in Marseille where thugs, they had parts that covered. Does it always work like this? Yes,
it’s always like that. One part always has blankets. This is normal. This is the system. Are you afraid of guys who rob parties? There are many stories like that. There was one, not long ago, on Rex. It can happen, It happens often. They rob pharmacies, They rob poker games. After that, we are here, we work, we won’t be able to walk on it. I have a family life too, I have a wife, children. This is my livelihood, so I would say, we won’t be able to take the bread off like that. And you,
you chose this path, Why ? In relation to drug trafficking or other activities? Because I want to be as much as possible in the… Legality, even though it’s not legal, but for me, at the level of my mind, I’m not doing anything wrong. I play card games. Card games that could cost him 3 years in prison and a 45,000 euro fine. In the underground game, we find bridges between traditional circles and neighborhood thugs. Especially for illegal slot machines. In many bars, bingo. This game looks like pinball. In reality, It’s a slot machine in disguise. For a few euros, you throw several balls, which randomly fall on numbers. And if you make a winning combination, The cafe owner secretly gives you the loot. Up to 2000 euros. In the northern districts, old-fashioned crooks entrust the management of their blingos to local youths. We are going to meet one of them. I am originally from the north of Marseille, that is to say the northern districts. Isn’t that a neighborhood team you work with? There are big teams behind it and we are working with them. What exactly is your job? My job is… I take care of the maintenance of the machine I’ll get the money back If the machine runs well, we can come once a week We can come once every 15 days if the machine is running averagely The money of the days players and shared between the cafe owner and the team of thugs who placed the machine for him. And since there are hundreds of bingo halls in the city, It’s very profitable. The gains from a device like this, what is it roughly monthly? It can start from a minimum of one… A classic bar, let’s say 1000 euros each between the owner of the machine and the boss of the bar, It can go much higher in some bars in the northern district. Many in the northern districts, It can go up to 10,000 euros per month. At 10,000, to divide in two. Divide in two, Yes. The bingo example shows that old and new generation thugs can work together. Most often, They get to know each other when they find themselves behind bars. In Marseille, there is a key place. A place where all the crooks live side by side, size each other up and sometimes play tricks together. This is the Baumettes prison. 1,800 prisoners for 1,400 places. What’s going on behind these walls? To show it, A prisoner agreed to film his daily life in prison. Chaudrier,
are you being filmed? He serves as our guide. Otherwise the view is not bad. We start with a visit to his exercise yard, that of building D, the newest in the prison. Inmates spend two hours here a day. As outside, life is organized between pétanque and card games. Inside, Many inmates spend their time in the gym. But behind this apparent good humor, the reality of life is much harsher. Mourad has been in and out of prison since he was 15. He is 25 today. He answers our questions. The Baumettes, he knows well. All communities, we will say, There’s not much racism here. There is a little bit of it though. A little bit of white with white, gypsies with gypsies, but we still mix. You have to choose your side, his friends, to protect oneself, we don’t talk with the… You don’t talk to child rapists, all that. After,
each neighborhood, they stay together for a while, because that’s how it is, they know each other from outside, people. After, those who do not know each other, It’s a bit like arm wrestling with hearts, rapists with rapists. It’s a bit mixed up, sometimes. Mourad is now in building D, the most modern. The other three buildings are much more dilapidated. They house almost exclusively young people from the neighborhoods. And the atmosphere is very tense. In the other buildings, the one who comes in, who is not from Marseille, and even sometimes the one from Marseille, he gets blown up. 18-year-olds are being massacred by 5-6 people. They don’t get stabbed. The showers, These are the places where scores are settled. Because there are no supervisors. I find, Me, who lived almost 10 years in prison, I find that… A guard arrives. He has to stop the camera. These clandestine images of the Baumettes, We will show them to someone who knows this prison well. We return to see the former robber of Andoum, Paul Nery. In all, He was imprisoned for 26 years in various establishments. His last stay at Baumette was 3 years ago. He was also in building D. On the floor where we were, there were all the survey pages, many more young people, since the majority of prisoners in Marseille, They are a lot of young people. Paul Léry was surprised by the attitude of these young people towards the older generation. There are young people in prison who have a certain little horror. So there are young people who are respectful of that. There are some who told me in the morning, you see people I’ve known for a very long time, we kiss each other, and there are young people who told me in the morning to say hello, can i kiss you? Of course, they will start. So there is one of the young ones who was perhaps, maybe, it’s good that he supposes it, he must have had maybe two stripes, two gold stripes in the neighborhood perhaps. One day he told me, What is your height Paul? I told him, that you meet me? He told me, How’s your size? I’ll get you some nice Nikes, pretty… Like them in the neighborhood, on the tomato, on good evening. I was bothering them on the tomato. There’s no reason you should make me a tomato lunch. No,
I insist, Paul,
I’m going to make you. It was the emotional side, the nice side. What worries the former robber, is that today, Small and big criminals rub shoulders in the same exercise yard. Paradoxically, The prison renovation has created a delinquent factory. NOW. There is the course by building, Yes. And at the time, They were small square courtyards. There were 23 guys in a yard. 22, 23. We used to call them Camemberts. So they broke down all these partitions to make large courtyards. After class, we can arrange, all that. But it is a harmful place, negative. Because the prison yard, It’s the university of crime. There are some who will come out, for having sold, for example, chili, concrete, They will come out having learned how to move up to the next level of escalation. That is, an act of violence. What is… When released…
This observation, it is also made by Mourad, the prisoner currently in Beaumet. Effectively, in prison, we make a lot of acquaintances, we learn to set up shots, we make alliances, because we make alliances with those who are good in a certain area, and so there it is,
it’s school, As I said,
it’s the school of crime. Criminal worlds meet in prison and sometimes, they join forces to get out of it, as during the spectacular escape from Grasse prison of the robber Pascal Payet, July 14, 2007. It was this 43-year-old man who escaped early in the evening, convicted of the murder of a cash transporter in 1997. Pascal Payet was serving a 30-year prison sentence. He was taken out of this prison by helicopter. Twice already, he had escaped in the same way, by air, from the Luyne remand center. Pascal Payet is an old-fashioned thug. His specialty, the robbery of armored vans. He was convicted of the murder of a cash transporter. This figure of banditry escapes this time, thanks to young people from the neighborhood. The commando that freed him came from a deprived area south of Marseille, the Caillonne, a stone’s throw from the Calanques. On site, we found a member of the commando, Taleb. At the time, He is recruited by a thug he knew in prison. See you, we meet with a friend, He tells me he needs me for another service. He tells me what the service is. The service, It’s about going to get someone. This person, It was Pascal and I accepted. It was not paid, It was just out of friendship. Without necessarily knowing him. Without necessarily knowing him. The operation is ambitious. First step, You have to take a helicopter with its pilot. The commando will rob a company at Canemant-de-Lieu airport. So how does it work in practice? I was called the day before, on the 13th, to be told that it was for July 14th. July 14, We left in the morning. 6:30 a.m., We entered the helicopter offices. Taleb and his accomplices are armed with assault rifles. Under threat, a pilot takes them into his plane. Heading to Grail Prison. The helicopter lands on the roof of the prison. She stays there with the pilot. A remainder on the roof, two go down, open the door to the isolation ward, go to the cell, open the cell door. Pascal was taken out even though he knew nothing at all. Since he came out from there inside, He was in his underwear when he came out. Well,
we ripped it out. Between taking off from the airfield and landing on the roof and going into the prison and coming out, It only gave us 20 minutes. Then I went home very quietly, I watched the fireworks from the terrace of my house. So. Professional work. Pascal Payet vanishes into thin air. At the time, Pierre Follacci is number 2 at BRB in Marseille. He is leading the investigation. He learns through a tip that it was some local boys who did the deed. More precisely from Caillonne. At the start, nobody believes it. But investigators are still monitoring the neighborhood from the hill overlooking it. We settled on the name we were given at the start, about the boy who is from here, who was the oldest of the commando, and then one thing led to another, from physical surveillance from here, then technique elsewhere, and then it continued for several weeks, we were able to graft all the other members of the commando onto this individual. We were a little surprised that it came from a city. We had been more accustomed to it in previous escapes. From Pascal Payet to seeing people from the traditional environment, from the traditional Marseille environment. Following this track, The police arrested Pascal Payet in Spain a few weeks later. End of the escape and beginning of the troubles for Taleb. The police, she came, She watched us. They stood on the hill up there and started taking pictures of us. What we didn’t know, There was an informant in this story who was working with the police at the beginning. Three months later, we got arrested. Taleb will serve 5 years in prison for complicity in escape. Today, He remains proud to have participated in such a successful operation. It is from this case… That the Marseille police understood that crime had changed face. That from now on, the city notebooks played in the big league. At the end of our investigation, We’re going to see someone who refuses to give up. He fights daily to keep young people away from drug-ridden areas. Direction Consola, a city in the 15th arrondissement of Marseille. Karim, 43 years old, is one of the leaders of the football club. For 8 years, he trains the young people of the neighborhood. More than 300 people come every week to play football on this field, in the heart of the city. According to him, We must act from a young age to prevent them from going bad. Today, It’s true that a 12-year-old will be able to take the first step, do something stupid that could ruin his life, we will say. SO, this youth, this age group, it’s 10 years, 11 years old, 12 years old, 13 years old.
I repeat, it’s very important, that’s when, at that age, that we, we must do as much work as possible. But as much as we, sports educators, even as many elected officials, It is over these four years that everything will change. Because the little one, if he leaves, he will leave between those ages. Karim has found that his football training provides a framework for the children. These little ones, We are in contact with them all week. With two workouts per week, plus their school, They don’t have much time to go out after training to try to front on the right, left. It prevents you from making certain stupid mistakes, it’s sure. Today, It’s true that we always have competition, but we now have this famous speech which makes them understand, be careful. Sunday, we play. When we let them go on Friday evening, we explain to them. Attention, what you’re going to do on Friday night, SATURDAY, because we, Sunday,
Mathieu Fautre will be here later. So we try to take away the time that could serve as a famous drift. So. How old are you? Two ? Two. What is life like in the northern districts today? We see terrible images, But what are the northern districts like today? It’s good ! That’s very good! Is it quiet here in Consola? Yes ! It’s good and we have a lot of fun at this stadium? Yeah ! This is the main stadium in Consola! All right ! What do you want to do in life? I want to play football! Me too ! You all want to play football? Well yes! I want to be a police officer! What do you want to do? Policeman!
Do you want to be a policeman? Ah well come on, come tell us about it. Is it true that you want to be a police officer? Yeah ! What do you like about the police? You want to put your people in jail? Do you want to put your people in prison? Yes.
So we’re doing something. Okay.
You’re for the law, it has to go well. Is that it? You have to respect people, otherwise you put them in prison. Come on, get down, go down, come down! Go ahead,
go ahead, me, me! Me?
There in the south! Ah, you’ve made a name for yourself nationally! He is very bad. Go ahead, it’s for me, it’s for me. This is for you, it’s for you! It’s good ! It’s good!
Damn! Yes!
Yeah, it’s done ! Seb,
you say goodbye to the gentlemen, here we go ! It was like kids, we took it away! Yes !

Dans l’imaginaire collectif, Marseille évoque le soleil, la Méditerranée et la Bonne Mère. Mais derrière la carte postale se cache une autre réalité : celle des règlements de comptes sanglants, du trafic de drogue et des armes de guerre.

Ce documentaire exclusif plonge au cœur des quartiers nord, là où les guetteurs surveillent chaque coin de rue, où les charbonneurs alimentent le business, et où les familles vivent au rythme des détonations. On y découvre comment fonctionne la hiérarchie du trafic, pourquoi les armes lourdes circulent aussi facilement, et quelles conséquences tragiques pèsent sur les jeunes enrôlés malgré eux.

À travers des témoignages rares, des images inédites et une immersion totale dans les cités, ce film révèle la réalité crue des gangs marseillais, entre survie, argent facile et mort violente.

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