the times | Wednesday February 16 2022 31
Wo r l d
Belgian police arrested 30 people
yesterday in raids targeting Albanian
gangs smuggling cocaine into Europe
from South America.
The operation included searches in
Spain, Italy, Germany, Croatia and the
Netherlands, with weapons, cocaine,
cash, luxury watches, diamonds, cryp-
tocurrency stashes and vehicles seized.
Public prosecutors in Belgium said
the raids were carried out to break an
international drug-trafficking network
that was mostly from eastern Europe
but had connections to the Italian ma-
fia.
The gang had been smuggling
cocaine from Brazil, Ecuador, Colom-
bia, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay. Its
activities mainly involved using “con-
tainer carriers” coming into Antwerp
and the Dutch port of Rotterdam, but
also to Le Havre in France and
Hamburg in Germany.
Shipments were also brought into
should stay true to myself, that the
media was going to describe me as
brutal but that I should be sincere, and
that the important thing was to keep my
sincerity. I think he is right.”
While both have cast themselves as
anti-establishment and anti-immig-
ration, Trump has a background in
business and reality TV while Zem-
mour is a polemicist and pundit who
believes he is the heir to a long, right-
wing French intellectual tradition.
Zemmour, an independent, is trying
to woo voters away from Pécresse, 54,
who is under fire after a calamitous
speech at a rally in Paris last weekend.
One poll published by the Harris
Interactive institute put President
Macron, 44, on 25 per cent in the first
round of the April election, ahead of
Marine Le Pen, 53, leader of the far-
right National Rally, on 17.5 per cent,
Zemmour on 15.5 per cent and Pécresse
on 15 per cent.Trump is backing me for
president, says Zemmour
Adam SageAlbanian gangsters held after drug raids
Europe using cargo planes or private
jets, according to detectives, which was
a mark of mafia wealth.
“The new forms of criminal organi-
sation are no longer exclusively family
or clan-based,” Belgium’s federal prose-
cutor’s office said. “ These are joint ven-
tures on the model of classic commer-
cial companies.”
Last year almost 90 tonnes of cocaine
were seized in Antwerp. Trafficking the
drug through Belgium brings criminal
organisations an estimated turnover of
up to €130 billion a year, officials said.
Police added that mafia gangs, main-
ly Albanian in this case, have trans-
ferred their wealth into legal assets,
using property and cryptocurrencies
instead of cash.
“The behaviour of the leaders of
criminal organisations is changing.
They invest in safe assets such as real
estate and legal companies,” the prose-
cutor said.
“Cryptowallets are found in more
and more files, including this one. This
is an emerging trend to be followedclosely, which shows the digitalisation
and modernity of criminal organisa-
tions.”
The criminal network is said to be a
sophisticated, diverse and agile, with a
structure mirroring the organisation of
a multinational company.
“There is a system for transferring
skills, for example ‘cooks’ from South
America,” the prosecutor said. “[They
operate] networks where everyone
does their part according to their field
— production, transport, processing
and distribution. The only common
driver: cost and profit optimisation.”
The investigation has uncovered a
drug war in Brussels and Antwerp
between two rival Albanian gangs that
is thought to have resulted in at least
eight murders.
The raids are linked to the breaking
of an encrypted phone service known
as the Sky ECC last year, which
revealed that drug gangs had colluded
with and bribed corrupt lawyers, civil
servants, a senior police detective and a
customs officer.Belgium
Bruno Waterfield Brussels
Éric Zemmour, the far-right candidate
in the French presidential election, says
he has the backing of Donald Trump.
His campaign said he had a “long and
friendly” phone call with the former US
president this week discussing migra-
tion, law and order and the economy.
The announcement came as two
polls showed Zemmour edging into
third place in the election race ahead of
Valérie Pécresse, 54, the mainstream
centre-right Republicans candidate.
Despite Trump’s divisive image, his
support is viewed as an asset at a time
when Zemmour is seeking to show that
he has international stature.
Zemmour, 63, said they shared their
views on the “destinies” of France and
the US, which are “caught up in the tur-
moil of a war of civilisations”.
Asked what advice Trump, 75, had
offered, he said: “He told me that IThe “massive and uncontrolled” use of
English by officials and businesses in
France is threatening the national
language, sowing discord and fuelling
extremism, says the Académie
Française.
The body set up in 1635 to safeguard
the French language made the warning
in a report denouncing the spread of
English words and terms in govern-
ment documents, public information
campaigns and corporate literature.
The report said public and private
sector organisations viewed the use of
English as evidence of their modernity
— but it represented an attack
on the French language,
undermining syntax and
splitting the country
along linguistic lines.
On one side of the
divide was a young,
wealthy urban elite at
ease with English, the
academy said, but on
the other was a swathe
of the population filled
with resentment at what it
viewed as gobbledygook.
Among examples cited was a
website for tourists called My Loire Val-
ley in the wine-producing region of
western France, the “pickup stations”
opened by La Poste, the French post
office, for the collection of parcels, and
the “zero emission valley” in the
Auvergne mountains of central France
as part of a green initiative.
President Macron was also criticised
for inaugurating Taste France, a cam-
paign to promote French gastronomy.
The car manufacturer Renault was
denounced for its driver assistance
technology, “Easy Drive”, and its rival
Peugeot for its advertising slogan
“Unboring the future”.
French purists
bemoan English
‘mumbo jumbo’
in their language
France
Adam Sage Paris
The report, drawn up by six of the
academy’s most eminent members,
including Sir Michael Edwards, the
Franco-British poet, said that in all
these examples, a French term could
and should have been employed. It also
argued that efforts to use English often
ended up in mumbo jumbo.
When officials on the French Riviera
wanted to promote water skiing, for in-
stance, they told tourists “venez rider”
[come ride] without apparently realis-
ing the verb “rider” exists neither in En-
glish nor in French, the report said.
The academy conceded that English
words were sometimes useful to fill
“gaps” in French, but the “massive, un-
stable, uncontrolled influx is damaging
the identity and possibly the
future of our language, and
most other languages”.
The report said the
nation’s mindset was
also in danger: “The
logic of thought is
affected, the analyti-
cal structure of the
French sentence sup-
planted by the concise
[structure] of English.”
The academy’s members
are all distinguished intellec-
tuals known as “the immortals”.
Their concern is not new. The academy
says on its website that worries about
foreign languages precedes its founda-
tion, with critics complaining about
Italian words in the 16th century. Its
fears have grown in recent decades,
especially after René Étiemble, the
French author, published his seminal
work, Parlez-Vous Franglais, in 1964.
Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, 92, the
head of the academy, said in an inter-
view with Le Figaro that French was in
“mortal danger” and linguistic division
was fuelling extremism, with much of
the population feeling excluded by the
use of English words.A
lexei Navalny,
the imprisoned
Kremlin critic,
made a defiant
appearance in
a prison court yesterday
facing embezzlement
charges that could keep
him locked up until 2032
(Marc Bennetts writes).
A video link showedNavalny, 45, in a
black prison
uniform,
embracing his
wife, Yulia,
while guards
stood on either
side. She had
demanded access
to the closed-
door proceedings
a day earlier.
The Russian
opposition leader is
already serving a two-
and-a-half year sentence
for embezzlement.
The new case was
launched in December
2020, when Navalny wasrecovering in Germany
from a poisoning attack
with the nerve agent
novichok. “You’re going
to increase my term
indefinitely. What can we
do about it?” he saidduring the hearing. “The
activities of people are
more important than the
fate of one individual. I’m
not afraid.”
He urged activists of
his FBK anti-corruption
foundation to “continue
their investigations, to
continue to publish facts
about corruption, to find
out what Putin and his
relatives, his second or
third wife, did with all the
stolen money”.
He also called for
regime change, saying: “I
don’t want these people to
be in the Kremlin. They
have been sitting there
for decades. They are
thieves.”
At a press conference
with President Putin in
Moscow, Olaf Scholz, the
German chancellor,
condemned the trial,
describing it as
“incompatible with the
principles of the rule of
law”.
The rest of Navalny’s
family, as well as other
visitors, are
barred from the
trial at the IK-2
penal facility in
Pokrov, 80
miles east of
the capital.
Before the
hearing, Yulia
Navalny said
her husband
would become
the first
person in
modern
Russian
history to be
tried in a
prison camp.
“They are
afraid to hold
the trial in Moscow,” she
wrote on Instagram.
Investigators claim that
Navalny stole £3.4 million
in donations to FBK for
his personal use. The
charge has a maximum
term of ten years.Wife consoles
Navalny as
he faces ten
more years
Alexei Navalny was able to
share a tender moment
with his wife, Yulia. Below,
Yulia leaving the prison
camp after the hearingn attack
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Their concern isnb t p P m t h N h w t p m R h t p ath iALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; DENIS KAMINEV/REUTERS