Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Award-winning French policeman on trial for 'paying informants with seized drugs'

Michel Neyret, who was given the Légion d’Honneur for his 'exceptional' service to the state, is accused of accepting watches and staying in luxury hotels in exchange for information

John Lichfield
Paris
Monday 02 May 2016 16:37 BST
Comments
Michel Neyret denies the charges laid against him
Michel Neyret denies the charges laid against him

One of France’s most successful and decorated police detectives has gone on trial for allegedly sharing in the ill-gotten gains of the criminals who he was supposed to catch.

The long-awaited trial of Michel Neyret is expected to lift the veil on a long-standing but forbidden French police practice of “paying off” informers with parts of intercepted drugs shipments.

The 60-year-old, who has a style more akin to a TV or film detective, denies all charges. He admits making “mistakes” in getting too close to organised criminals but says that his sole ambition was to enforce the law.

In the course of a three week long trial in Paris, the prosecution will allege that ex-Commissioner Neyret accepted stays in luxury hotels in Morocco, Cannes and the Lyon area, expensive watches and €40,000 (£31,000) worth of clothes.

He also, it will be alleged, opened a joint off-shore bank account with two convicted criminals to receive millions of euros obtained by defrauding the European system of “carbon pollution” taxes.

At the time of his arrest in 2011, Mr Neyret was deputy head of detectives in Lyon and reputed to be the best-informed policeman in France on the activities of drug traffickers and other organised criminals. In 2004, he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by Nicolas Sarkozy, then interior minister, for his “exceptional” service to the French state.

Mr Neyret is charged with “corruption, associating with criminals, violating professional secrecy, receipt of stolen goods, drug-trafficking and money-laundering”. His wife Nicole, 67, three other former police officers, a former lawyer and an alleged criminal are also appearing in court on related charges. A second alleged criminal is on the run.

The former detective’s lawyer Gabriel Versini-Bullara, said: “Michel Neyret was determined to go to the limit in gathering intelligence, to the point of teaming up with certain wrong-doers. His objective was to allow the police to make spectacular arrests of a kind that otherwise don’t fall from the sky.”

Mr Neyret is alleged, amongst other things, to have raided police stores of seized drugs to pay-off informants. He is also alleged to have allowed favoured criminals to keep part of intercepted drugs shipments in return for information on their associates.

The court will be told that this was a long-standing means used by police in France to pay off their “tontons” (literally “uncles” or snouts). The practice was officially banned in 2004 but the court is expected to hear evidence that it is still commonly used.

The prosecution will allege, however, that Mr Neyret’s relationship with one convicted criminal, Gilles Benichou, went much further. According to the prosecution case, the detective accepted gifts and money from Mr Benichou in return for tip-offs on police activity and intervening to suppress minor prosecutions.

In a bugged phone conversation, whose transcript was leaked to Le Monde, Mr Neyret’s, wife Nicole, was allegedly heard complaing to Mr Benichou that he had turned her husband “rotten”.

“Ever since you started giving him money, he’s not the same man,” Nicole Neyret was allegedly recorded as saying. “He’s blowing it all on champagne, on nights out. Please don’t give him money, or he will go to the casinos and hand it to floozies. You’ve turned Michel rotten. Now he’s a bigger crook than any of you. He’s obsessed with dosh, dosh, dosh.”

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in