In the stream of ECO-FI hearings

At the Palais de Batignolles, you can come across, more or less by chance, economic and financial hearings in half a dozen correctional chambers. During the few weeks separating the deconfinement from the vacations, the choice is more limited. We finally settle on the benches of the ^11th room. First file, hearing over three half-days: this is what is nicknamed an “insert scam”. That is to say that, claiming to represent a recognized institution, salespeople peddle overpriced advertising pages to companies, in more or less fictitious booklets, by unfolding a tendentious argument that we call "unpacks" . Some defendants are also sent back for money laundering.

In this case, everything probably starts in a certain good faith. A genuine association of veterans publishes a small annual publication, but can no longer finance its printing. A providential man tumbles, offers to release at his own expense a special issue paying tribute to the intervention group of the gendarmerie (GIGN), and to be remunerated solely by the marketing of advertising space. Obviously the jackpot, in the context of the attacks of 2015.

The president of the association signs an agreement, covered with a (huge) gendarmesque emblem. He never belonged to the unit, was never even a gendarme. Before the investigators of the astute delinquency repression brigade (BRDA), he persists in answering that the visual is not registered, and can therefore be used freely, as if that were the question. It is this original “recklessness” that will serve to give credibility to the rest of the “unpacking”.

For his part, Serge, the co-signer of the agreement, collects the advertising revenue (it is a question of three hundred thousand euros for this issue), then transfers most of it to a string of supposedly subcontracting companies, at the head of which there are straw managers. A scam within a scam, the deliberately obscure purchase orders relate to several advertising spaces, but only mention a unit price: when advertisers pay what they think is a global invoice, salespeople come back to the charge and demand 'other payments of the same amount, waving the threat of legal action. This is called a “distribution scam”.

“As we say back home, I was a bit hurt financially”

Serge's listening is overwhelming. He has fun finding new sordid "unpacking" according to the dramas of the news. Y indicates a good thirty times that the sales people are "real motherfuckers", which the president does in turn, since she reads the verbatim transcripts, setting the tone. Against Serge, the prosecutor will require, in addition to a fine, two years, one of which is closed. But the one suspected of being the organizer and ultimate beneficiary of the scheme, a certain Gilles, is not in the courtroom: under the influence of an arrest warrant, he is in Israel. It is moreover from there, and occasionally from Morocco, that most of the canvassing is done, since only a handful of prospectors operate from French territory.

Among the latter, Michel, in his sixties, explains: “I made little mistakes, I confused receipts and profits a little. So I started working for them as a self-employed person because, as we say back home, I was a bit hurt financially”. About his listening to him, he admits: “Indeed, at the beginning [of each conversation], I said that I was calling for the GIGN, it was bullshit. But the police did not keep the suite! ". The proc' is ironic: "Really bad luck, they opportunely cut off just when you disabused your interlocutors...".

According to Cassiopée, Michel has just been sentenced for comparable maneuvers, based on use of false quality, which will soon weigh down a small case. Always on the personality, he evokes with a certain arrogance his recent retraining, which does not produce exactly the expected effect. No one has obviously warned him against a curious acoustic phenomenon: when the words "insulation for one euro" are pronounced in front of a criminal court, this one hears "scam with two bullets". The prosecution is asking, in addition to a prospecting ban, for eighteen months.

And fifteen months against Avi, de facto manager of two “advertising agencies” (including a clothing store!) who, under cover of subcontracting, served as “laundresses”, for two hundred thousand euros. “These sums were not caused…”, jargons an assessor. Lost look: “I mean you were doing fake billing. - Oh yes ". These sums then left for Bulgaria or Georgia, minus a commission.

Avi explains in essence that this is the only solution he has found to save his failing business from bankruptcy. He is starting to have a good record in ECO-FI (bankruptcy by concealment of assets, fraud, forgery, counterfeit checks, etc.) and has also recently discovered a sudden inclination for thermal insulation. The president of the association is also prosecuted, but absent for medical reasons, to which he succumbs just after the last suspension: he therefore remains forever presumed innocent.

"If you understand, it's because you weren't explained well"

The correctional chambers before which the ECO-FI matter is raised are essentially fed by two distinct sections of the Paris public prosecutor's office ("F2" and "J2"), one of which has extended jurisdiction. Not to mention the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF), which has its favorite chamber ^: the 32nd, an offshoot of the ^11th . As the same logic of mille-feuille prevails at all scales, acts committed in the Yvelines, for example, can come under Versailles, Nanterre, Paris or the PNF.

That is four possible orientations (and two general prosecutor's offices), pending a future partially competing European superstructure. The logic of the whole is hermetic. Some ECO-FI magistrates confess that they do not understand all the refinements, in the mode: "If you understand something, it is because you have been badly explained". But let's close this parenthesis and return to the courtroom.

This lawsuit was triggered (involuntarily) by the complaint of a luxury leather goods manufacturer. It all starts with the robbery of several trucks carrying real handbags, found in Hong Kong. Information opening. In 2013, investigations incidentally revealed a counterfeiting network, including several of its (former) workers. They successively lead to two additional indictments, a disjunction, a dismissal order (ORTC) full of clerical errors, and finally a judgment of the investigating chamber trying to rectify them.

In the small room on the fourth floor, we somehow make our way through the middle of nine defendants and as many defense lawyers. The court evacuated objections in limine litis, obviously attached to the merits. Then looks at the crocodilians who, in spite of themselves, provide the raw material: we review scientific names, favorite biotopes, and even adult sizes. The president has also become unbeatable on the successive operations: cutting, assembly, turning, finishing...

“They called me the old fart”

At the same time as the roles of each other, the magistrate summarizes a certain number of conversations intercepted between them, and therefore associates with each the nickname given by the others: "the redneck", "the little one", "the old man". … It feels like a film by Georges Lautner (or a title by Sergio Leone). On his bench, "the old man", who has gone through the file, rectifies: "They called me the old fool".

At the helm, he sums up a life of sadness and infinite loneliness. Several other "small hands" also went through at least one bad patch during their "recruitment". One comes to wonder if they were not chosen precisely because they could not spit on a few hundred euros per fake bag. All (with one exception) are being prosecuted for copyright and trademark infringement, as an organized gang. But also breach of trust, for having diverted parts or tools. None of them boast: some even sheepishly believe that they have betrayed the trust of founders who were in the cemetery before they were born. They follow one another at a good pace: the audience over three half-days was a bit optimistic.

At the head of the network, the prosecutor (like the investigating magistrates) imagines a triumvirate, which would have been (re)constituted on the death of the real instigator of the scheme, and shared most of the four million euros in revenue estimated by the investigators (going beyond the prevention period). Pierre would have cut the crocodile skins, and therefore set the pace for the rest of the chain: left for Vietnam after his first appearance and his indictment (in violation of his judicial control), he is absent, although represented.

Jean-Pierre would have more or less supervised and coordinated the successive tasks of the others, but his central role seems above all to have been deduced from the increase in his assets: no one here is however prosecuted for money laundering. Sandrine would have sold the goods to Asian tourists, or brought up their orders (especially in terms of colors). Around this hard core, gravitated finally Philippe, who went to collect the skins in Italy, and Stéphanie, the delivery girl.

"The defense supports everything and its opposite"

In the evening of the second day, pleadings of the two civil parties: the company itself, and the holding company holder of the rights. One of the lawyers is an intellectual property specialist, who strives to demonstrate the originality of "this iconic bag". Like the rest of the room, we pick up quickly: it's late and the lawyer feels obliged to unfold his technical argument at full blind.

The other is a criminal lawyer, and does much less in detail. She insists that "counterfeiting is something extremely serious for public order", going so far as to compare it to the robberies (and kidnappings) which initially motivated the opening of the investigation: on the defense benches, we breathe conspicuously while raising our eyes to the ceiling. Based on a loss of chance to sell genuine bags, they together claim €1,000,000. A sum as round as plump that they struggle to justify, for lack of wanting to make public the calculation of the fee that one of the companies pays to the other. Non-pecuniary damage: €300,000.

"I have the impression that the defense supports everything and its opposite...", launches the prosecutor: "There is no counterfeit because they are not the same bags, but there is no counterfeit because they are strictly the same”. She is not wrong, but does the same thing, going back and forth between identical and similar products, distinctive sign, famous mark... After all, it does not matter, according to her, since "the defendants all admitted having participated in a counterfeit network. For some workers, the breach of trust could not hold, because of ancestral practices in force in the workshops: it proposes to requalify in theft. In any case, the maximum incurred for the most severely sanctioned offense is ten years and €1,000,000.

Against Pierre, the Grand Manitou more or less on the run, it requires four years, two of which are suspended, and two hundred thousand euros. Against the two other organizers, she asks for thirty months and three years, partially accompanied by a simple reprieve, and arranged ab initio in house arrest under electronic surveillance (DDSE), as well as a 100,000 € fine each. At the other end of the chain, for the workers, there is “only” a question of fines, simple reprieve or day-fines.

"They kill animals to make handbags"

A scandal on the defense benches: the lawyers do not agree on anything, and especially not on their order of appearance. The dean says to the youngest: “Decreasing seniority is a rule that existed before you were born! ". Suspension. On recovery, we understand that it is because their clients are not informed of the same leaders, obviously, but also because an overwhelming majority of pure sugar criminals have no desire to embark, as the day before, on an exegesis of the intellectual property code.

The first to pass try to thwart the ubiquitous storytelling of the opposing party. It must be said that the court itself may have misused the term “house” (“big house”, “old house”…) to designate what, notwithstanding its almost bicentennial history and its majority family shareholding, n is only a group of capital companies. It shoots live ammunition, a little in all directions. “Those who kill animals to turn them into handbags come and tell us that it's horrible, what the defendants did! “, shouts the first. “They highlight the France brand, but the rights holders are in Monaco or Belgium”, thinks another, who waves an old newspaper clipping.

On the merits, some question the coexistence of two heads of prevention, copyright infringement and trademark infringement: "As there are no separate facts, the prosecutor tells us that the two companies have distinct interests, but which ones, apart from a distribution of billions between them? ". Others argue that the bag is a mere "servile copy". Above all, they are asking that solidarity be limited: otherwise, the civil parties could claim full damages from any of the potential convicts, on condition that they then turn against others. Suspension. They will be fixed on their fate in three months.

“I work on construction sites all day”

The 11th ^chamber is also a high place for hole procedures. In particular because this famous notion of an organized gang, which is moreover a real and non-personal circumstance, leads to judging those who are not sent back through those who are. The mechanism is invariable, and perfectly logical: the public prosecutor charges those present; the present charge the absent. Illustration with the following file, for which they are seven to face the court. Initially planned over five half-days, it will finally be dispatched in three.

Funds pass through the accounts of companies, some of which are fictitious. They transfer them from time to time to a Dutch import-export company, from where they fly to Cyprus or Delaware. In return, after deducting a commission, of course, they receive cash, which is used to pay “under the table” construction workers. Clearly the heart of the scheme is the Dutch money laundering operation (which doubles as a VAT fraud). Some defendants of the day were also prosecuted (and convicted) in this section, over another period of prevention.

This time, the prosecution takes the assembly from the other end, that of the “subcontractor” companies, and essentially from the angle of concealed work. The companies have in common that they are clients of the same “consulting” company, which also takes care of their accounting. Their shares have since been sold to the same people, in the back rooms of shady bistros. But during the prevention period, they were headed by “straw managers”, sometimes family members of the famous “consultant”.

“A moral partner does not exist”

Like his cousin Mounir, who disembarks completely: "I know nothing at all about society, I know nothing at all about how it's managed, I work on construction sites all day", sums up the interpreter. Mounir doesn't speak a word of French, has simply signed a whole bunch of blank checks, and incidentally taken €1,000 a month to take care of nothing. Same principle with Jawad, the little brother. But not for Abdel, a brother-in-law who naively thought he was really a manager, and therefore didn't get a penny. Others are still marching. Some have a small liability in ECO-FI.

We come to the famous “consultant”, considered as a co-organizer of the whole, and “de facto manager” of a certain number of structures, even if his name never appears anywhere. He prefers to call himself a "moral partner". "Sir, a moral partner doesn't exist," jokes a tongue-in-cheek lawyer. “Especially not here! “, adds the president. He gradually charges a certain "Mr. Chavez", who does not risk contradicting him since he is not fired. But he did admit, to the investigators, that he was responsible for recruiting the workforce on the car parks of large material surfaces.

All of this doesn't really add up. A lawyer grabs the ball: “It would be better if we had had an instruction, because there are really holes in the racket”. A long dialogue with the prosecutor ensues. A bit like at Roland-Garros, the president and her assessors, perfectly synchronized, pass from one to the other, following with their gaze the trajectory in the air of the arguments exchanged. The trial finally concedes: “I'm not super happy with the result either, we clearly only have part of the system, but we're doing what we can with the means we have…”.

After his requisitions the next day, big blank: no lawyer wants to go first. “So we are in agreement, I give the floor to the defendants and we adjourn the hearing? “, pretends to wonder the president. One of them ends up getting started. He pleads for release for cousin Mounir: all the elements that can really incriminate him are concentrated in the report of a single hearing, conducted without an interpreter. Abdel's lawyer, who did not know that he was not managing anything at all, also asked for release: "He does not intend to serve as a lamplighter for things he has never been associated with, neither near nor far. That of the "consultant" charges "Mr. Chavez" one last time and summarizes the procedure in a metaphor that smells good of grease: "It is not because in this car, a wheel is missing from the front axle, that it everything must be weighed on the other”.

Suspension of two hours, deliberated in stride. All true-false managers take a six-month suspended sentence and a management ban: “Even straw? “, laughs one of them. The “consultant” receives three years, one of which is closed, converted ab initio into a DDSE, and a fine of €60,000. With, in additional penalties, not only a prohibition to manage, but also another to exercise in business consulting. We finish early, and that's good, because the next day, we move on to a "credit scam", with an endless list of civil parties. But that will be for another time...