"I sold drugs to support myself": in Marseille, the surprising defense of a supposed member of the 'Ndrangheta

"I was in financial agony" : a member of a family considered to be affiliated with the powerful Calabrian mafia of the 'Ndrangheta , Domenico M. tried to justify himself on Tuesday in Marseille, where he is on trial in connection with a vast international drug trafficking case.

Like 21 other defendants, this 43-year-old man, wearing a brown polo shirt and a black sweater tied around his shoulders, has been on trial since Monday and until March 21 before the Marseille Criminal Court for his role in a network selling cocaine and cannabis resin that was mainly deployed in the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes but which also obtained supplies from the Paris region as well as from Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium.

"I sold drugs to support myself and my children," the defendant admitted on Tuesday from the dock: "A hundred grams a month, that must have earned me 1,500 euros a month," added the man with the shaved head and neatly trimmed beard.

This sum, between 2018 and 2020, supplemented the approximately 1,000 euros of income he received at the time for his part-time job in a youth workers' home in Vallauris (Alpes-Maritimes).

On Tuesday, the court did not address the facts, but only the personality of the defendant. And he therefore explained his life story. Questioned by the presiding judge about a previous four-year prison sentence in 2010 for drug trafficking also involving two of his uncles, Antonio and Luciano M., he assured that he did not want to hear about them anymore: "They paid me to do the dirty work, transporting cocaine."

"I was coming out of detention, I was in financial agony, with a young child and my pregnant wife," he continues. Convicted again, this time by the Italian courts, in December 2022, for importing, possessing and transporting narcotic substances, he was reincarcerated in May 2024, for a four-year prison sentence that he is serving in France.

And now there is this new case of drug trafficking, being tried in Marseille, where Domenico M. is also suspected of having played the role of intermediary, in his capacity as a member of a family considered to be affiliated with the 'Ndrangheta.

He is said to have intervened in particular during the conflict between Patrick V., considered the head of this network, and his associate Rémy E., and Albanians, from whom the two men allegedly stole 11 kg of cocaine. "I find myself there, everything is falling apart," he testifies, describing a life before his last incarceration apparently far removed from that of a powerful mafia boss, with a dual job as a VTC driver and self-employed in the events industry.

"For me, it's a disaster, I failed in my duties, the education of my son, I fell through," he laments, referring to his son's current troubles with the law. "There are quite a few things that are broken, I'm not proud of it," but "I take responsibility for my mistakes, I'm going to try to be as sincere and honest as possible in this story," he promises, on the eve of the start of the court's examination of the facts.

During an interrogation in September 2021, he had already admitted to investigators that he had participated in some of the facts he is accused of in this case, including the purchase, possession and transport of cocaine. However, he disputed the facts of importing and exporting narcotics, or even those of money laundering, for which he is also being referred.