Everybody knows it, mafia does not exist in France. Organised crime maybe, but what kind? Let's take a look at the recent events that took place in France that could definitely define the past months as the “bloody summer”.

On August 23, at Aix-en-Provence in the hinterland of Marseilles, a killer shot a man outside the hospital. Three bullets hit his chest, the abdomen and one arm. Mohamed, 33 years old, died. He was already well known by the local police due to his rank as caïd (boss) of the nearby city of Vitrolles.

He was killed in front of a store used as speakeasy in the neighbour of Encagnane (Aix's suburn).
«They arrived at ten o'clock at night, they put out tables and chairs. As far as i remember, they drank a lot and they smoked joints and they made noises until two in the morning», said one of the neighbors. «And then there's a line of cars, where everyone expects soft drugs. We called the police several times but nothing changed», said many people.

Aix en Provence is a very rich town with lot of clubs and breweries full of slot machines. Here the use of violence as a way to defend the territory is as much spread as in Marseilles, the largest criminal area in France after Paris. Aix is a must-cross point between Italy and Spain and the Rhone Valley. Moreover, Aix is the town of the Court of Appeal.

The French drug dealers called “caïds des cités” from that area don’t seem to be at the same level of other high French criminal organizations, like the Corsican one for example.

In May, the Dominican police intercepted two French traders at the airport of Puerto Plata. Banned from Dominican Republic, they were certainly recruiting drug couriers (“mules”). Another man, 39, used to live in Caracas with a false Venezuelan passport and a fake card of United Nations’ investigator.

The police found in his apartment 48 kg of cocaine. Originally from Lute, in Gennevilliers, a popular suburb in Paris and a hub of drug trafficking for the region, the man arrested was sentenced in absentia for 15 years of prison for committing murder in 2008. He was also charged with drug trafficking following the seizure of 110 kg of cocaine in an apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine in November 2010.

French drug dealers have begun to use the same violence typical of mafia organisations. On July 29th, in Tarascon, south of France, a man on a scooter fired several shots in the legs of another. This is a "Gambizzazione", a warning in the practices of the professional crime. The victim was wanted for being sentenced to two years in prison for a collective attempted theft. He was transferred to the prison hospital Baumettes in Marseilles.

The picture wouldn’t be clear enough without the Corsican point of view. On August 2nd, in Corsica, Adrien Chilini, 28, fell under fire from a killer. He was already known by the police because accused of an attempted robbery of a bank in Bastia. There are about thirty murders in Corsica every year with 300,000 residents and two elected officials were assassinated in the last 6 months.

And if French mafia doesn't exist, there are foreign mafiosi. On June 10th, police arrested in France a man who collaborated with the Calabrian clans, as part of the Operation "Crimini" that brought to the arrest of 180 suspects.

On June 9th, the Italian police in collaboration with PJ Nice, arrested an Italian-born French resident in Vallauris on the French side. On March 25th in Toulon, the court found guilty several Camorrists of illegal possession of weapons and of trafficking of cars between France and Italy. The head is a 30 years old Italian man, sentenced to eight years in prison in Italy for mafia association, extortion and illegal possession of weapons.

No one can elaborate a specific report of organized crime in France. But it exists. And proper countermeasures to fight it are lacking. Like the possibility to confiscate criminal assets and reuse them for social purposes. On March 25th, the French judiciary has indicted a 65 years old man for money laundering. Justice accused the owner of the brewery "La Belle Epoque," Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence, to be managed by the clan Barresi-Campanella, disbanded during a major operation in June 2010.

In Italy, police would have confiscated the property of the person and would have conducted extensive surveys on the property belonging to relatives. Then at the end of a legal procedure, forfeiture could become effective. Finally, we could transform it in a cultural center, a school of second chance, a shelter, a university against organized crime.