Last tango in Marseilles for French Mafia chief

Times
From Charles Bremner in Paris


POLICE commandos ringed the dock in the Marseilles criminal court yesterday when Jacques Imbert, the “last godfather” of the French underworld, went on trial for cigarette trafficking.

The trial of M Imbert, 74, was depicted by the media as a last-ditch attempt to bring to justice a glamorous but dangerous gangster who had eluded prosecutors for five decades.

The newspaper Le Monde said: “Generations of police officers have followed his astonishing destiny with fascination. It has been a dance of cops and robbers that has lasted 50 years and traversed the history of the underworld.”

M Imbert, known as Jacky le Mat, or Mad Jack, could be jailed for five years if convicted of planning with the Russian mafia to open an underground cigarette factory near Marseilles. However, prosecution witnesses have retracted their initial testimony to investigators. “The case against him is pretty much empty,” France Soir said yesterday.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-1371609,00.html

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