2023-11-07 21:11:08
The prosecution pointed out the “important” and “abnormal” role of Stéphane Lapeyre, former head of the operational division (No. 3) of the Narcotics Office (OCRTIS, now Ofast) and his subordinate Jocelyn Berret, as part of an “overhead” cocaine importation in 2013, but which passed under the radar of the judicial authorities.
“We are not in a controlled delivery operation,” argued deputy prosecutor Hervé Tétier, in reference to this police technique consisting of letting drugs cross borders to dismantle, downstream, resale networks.
14 kilos of cocaine
For this operation, the two police officers called on an “informant”, Lionel K. known as “Marc”, responsible for convincing a Guyanese just released from prison, Jean-Michel L., to go to Suriname to buy 14 kg of cocaine to be sent by air freight from Cayenne to Paris Orly airport. Without this appearing anywhere in the procedure.
On the way to Cayenne, Jean-Michel L., carrying large bills in his bag – almost 80,000 euros – was informed that he “did not have to worry about customs” if he passed through a specific portico, indicated by “Marc”. The investigation did not make it possible to know whether the money came from the traffickers or from “Marc”, nor what really happened to the goods once recovered by Jean-Michel at Orly.
After having sold a small part of it, Jean-Michel L. claims to have returned almost all of the cocaine to “Marc”, which the latter denies. This informer always claimed that he had only obeyed orders. The police, for their part, denounced at the trial a “manipulator” who had taken numerous liberties without informing them.
“Hunter’s instinct”
At the trial, divisional commissioner Stéphane Lapeyre, now stationed in Bordeaux, admitted to having “lacked perspective and discernment” in the management of this operation. He spoke of this “hunter’s instinct” which animated the Drugs Office at the time, and which “perhaps biased our judgment a little”.
His lawyer, Maître Thibault de Montbrial, criticized a trial aimed at “smashing two good guys from Ocrtis”, and argued that his client, a “monk-soldier” devoted to his mission, had in no case had the intention to commit a crime. Maître Anne-Laure Compoint defended Jocelyn Berret, “not a “rogue” but a police officer who wanted to do his job at all costs, even if he could have done it badly”.
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