The case dates back to last spring. On May 18, two men driving a Mercedes were stopped on the A4 motorway near a tollbooth in Seine-et-Marne, reports Le Parisien. In the boot of the car, customs officers discovered (with the help of a sniffer dog) a GPS transmitter and 490,000 euros in small notes hidden in ironing bags. The driver and his passenger then declared that they were on their way home to Germany.
According to our colleagues in journalism, the driver is a Syrian refugee. He lives in Germany with his wife and children and drove with… his boss. According to a source consulted by the newspaper Le Parisien, they were paid 2,000 euros for the transfer of the vehicle and were supposed to hand over the suitcases to another Syrian living in Germany, apparently a ” physician “.The Paris investigatory chamber ruled on the driver’s request for release on Wednesday August 11.According to the Syrian driver, his employer is a simple employee of a cosmetics shop in Saarland. The driver was in financial difficulties and only helped his employer with the transfer by car. Moreover, “it was the first time he had made this trip”, his lawyer explained during the trial. His lawyer added that her client did not know the rules that applied in France, which were “different in Germany”, especially regarding the transport of money. For his part, the boss, whose first name is Mohamed, admitted that he had already made several trips between France and Germany in the past on behalf of the same man, a famous “Syrian physician”.This man could be at the head of a large money laundering operation, as the money was transferred after each transfer by car to bank accounts in countries where there are no fiscal controls, according to Le Parisien. The total amount of money involved was not disclosed, but according to a judge questioned, it could be “a major organised crime operation”. The driver, suspected of criminal activity, was denied a request to be released.
Un réfugié syrien et son patron interpellés avec plus de 500 000 euros dans le coffre de leur berline