A drug cap sought after by France all over the world, Moufid Bouchibi, alias “Mouf”, a big boss and the main importer of cannabis in France, was arrested on the evening of Sunday March 21 in Dubai. He was presented this Wednesday to the local justice for his extradition to France, where he had been sentenced in absentia, in Bordeaux to 20 years in prison while he was on the run in the Maghreb where he owns real estate in Morocco and Algeria.
Born in Orsay in Essonne to an Algerian father and mother, Moufide Bouchibi, 41, had been tracked for many months by police officers from the Anti-Narcotics Office (OFAST) who had located him in Algeria and Tunisia. On Tuesday evening, the Dubai prosecutor’s office confirmed the identity of “Mouf” to the French authorities. It is the fall of a legend and a ghost. For more than ten years, he escaped the police officers specialized in the fight against drug trafficking. One of the only photos of him in the possession of French authorities is more than twenty years old.
The trafficker was formally identified thanks to a photo and fingerprints contained in an Interpol red notice. The 41-year-old trafficker, a small city dealer who became the biggest importer of cannabis in France, has seen most of his lieutenants fall one by one over the years, while he had always managed to slip through the cracks, police investigators.
“On the run, it was said to be hidden in Algeria,” comments the journalist and writer Jérôme Pierrat, a specialist in organized crime (1). He started out as a small dealer before going up step by step all the levels of organized crime “. He even reached the peak of drug trafficking in France: if the figures are always to be taken with a grain of salt, he is credited with importing 50 to 60 tonnes of cannabis per year to Europe. A traffic which would have brought him up to 70 million euros per year.
Long eldorado of French traffickers, who found there a pleasant climate where they could display their wealth without arousing suspicion, Dubai has strengthened in recent months its security cooperation with a number of countries including France. In a few weeks, several leading traffickers were arrested in the Emirates. On February 18, it was Hakim Berrebouh, alias “Marcassin” or “La Baleine”, aged 40, who fell into the hands of the Dubai authorities. Reda Abakrim, said Turbo, was arrested at the end of December 2020 in Morocco after fleeing Dubai in a hurry.
