Marseille: five years in prison including four years closed for a former police officer who became a slumlord

Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credits: Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 10:08 a.m., January 24, 2024

Accused of having "industrialized" the rental of slums, Gérard Gallas, ex-police officer turned slumlord, was sentenced to five years in prison, including four years on Wednesday, at the end of an emblematic gangrene trial. unworthy housing in Marseille.

For his "henchman", Ali Faissoili Aliani, absent throughout the trial in November, during which he was presented as a "zealous factotum who did not hesitate to strike out against bad payers", the court Marseille correctional department handed down a four-year prison sentence with an arrest warrant.

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The two men were also sentenced to heavy fines, 75,000 euros for the former police officer at the administrative detention center in Marseille and 45,000 euros for his former right-hand man.

The court also had a heavy hand in terms of additional penalties, with the definitive confiscation of two buildings owned by the defendant via real estate companies (SCI), the confiscation of 220,000 euros seized from life insurance in his name, and 300,000 euros in damages in total for the numerous civil parties, including the city of Marseille.

In its judgment, the court found that Gérard Gallas had subjected vulnerable people to “appalling living conditions, in confined and unsanitary spaces, with major risks to their health and safety”.

“Gérard Gallas' status as a former police officer, known to a large number of tenants, is not insignificant,” the court asserted in its deliberations.

“Greedy megalomaniac”, Gérard Gallas had “industrialized” the rental of slums, had accused the prosecution in its indictment in the fall, asking for four years in prison against the former police officer, a milder sentence than that ultimately decided by the court.

Denouncing the “deliberate strategy” implemented by Gérard Gallas between 2019 and 2021, the prosecutor highlighted “the deliberate choice” of the defendant “to buy buildings at low prices in poor neighborhoods and to target vulnerable tenants”: “ We are not in an administrative offense, but in a criminal offense: the attack on human dignity,” insisted the magistrate.

In total, in his own name or via his SCI, Gérard Gallas, 50, owned around a hundred apartments in around ten buildings in Marseille.

But this lawsuit only concerned the apartments in four of these buildings.

These 72 accommodations, sometimes located in cellars, were rented for up to 600 euros, mainly to foreigners in precarious situations, often with minor children.

"We had water and electricity, but not all the time", and "there were cockroaches and scorpions", one of the victims, Peter Destiny, 26, who arrived in Nigeria from Nigeria, told AFP. Marseille in 2019, whose daughter, Success, was born in 2020, showing photos on her phone.