• An entrepreneur appeared for having rented a hundred substandard housing in the Lyon region between 2010 and 2016.

  • His main victims were undocumented migrants, while he was a migrant himself.

  • Thirteen accomplices are also being prosecuted, including the first family circle of the accused.

Seven years in prison and a 100,000 euros fine were required on Monday, October 11 before the criminal court, against the alleged organizer of a rental network of around one hundred substandard housing in the Lyon region of 2010 to 2016.

Ouajdi Ben Slama, 37, prosecuted along with 13 other defendants, has been described as "an entrepreneur of the occult" by prosecutor Laurie Lacoste, who also asked judges to ban him from running a business for fifteen years.

Five in 20 square meters

“He chose to cover it all up.

He has created an entirely opaque underground economy network, "said the magistrate, for whom the main defendant brought" greed to its climax "by taking advantage of the vulnerability of undocumented migrants to hire them, clandestinely, 113 housing.

"He took away the dignity of these poor people," insisted the prosecutor, recalling the testimony of a family who lived five in 20 square meters, and whose father had to sleep in a car.

"It is all the more detestable that he himself has known this course [of migration], he had no mercy", added Laurie Lacoste about this Tunisian who arrived in France at the age of 14. , naturalized since, who could, according to her, “become a very good entrepreneur if he had not chosen to be on the margins of society”.

The accused's family is involved

The 14 defendants are being prosecuted in particular for submitting vulnerable or dependent people to undignified housing conditions, fraud, money laundering in an organized gang.

The prosecutor requested sentences of three to five years in prison, including one suspended sentence, and fines of 50,000 to 100,000 euros against the "first circle" of accomplices, including brothers, sister and brother-in-law of the principal warned.

According to the prosecution, after managing undeclared low-cost, high-yield hairdressing salons, the family network invested in real estate, contracting two million euros in bank loans, in order to launder the money earned and to produce new profits by renting housing divided into small areas.

Justice

Lyon: A vast network of sleep merchants tried from Monday

Justice

Marseille: Heavy sentences, up to 18 months in prison, for sleep merchants

  • Court

  • Trial

  • Bad housing

  • Migrants

  • Justice

  • Lyon