Vast real estate scam: 19 people including ex-legionnaires sentenced

The fraud consisted of taking out loans from credit institutions by providing false documents, which had enabled the acquisition of more than 80 properties through nominees or front companies. Their rapid resale after work often not carried out allowed artificial capital gains.

Depicted as "the conductor" of the scam, Sébastian Celea, 41, engaged in the Foreign Legion from 2001 to 2007, was sentenced to five years in prison with a warrant of committal as well as a permanent ban on manage a business and exercise a commercial or industrial profession.

The prosecution portrayed him as "the organizer and animator of a system from which he derived significant financial benefits". His wife was sentenced to one year in prison to be served under house arrest under electronic surveillance and a fine of 15.000 euros.

Another former Romanian legionnaire was sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of 100.000 euros. He was placed under arrest warrant. The nominees, former comrades in arms of Sebastian Celea, were sentenced to sentences ranging from one year in prison suspended with a fine of 10.000 euros to one year in prison including six months suspended.

Numerous confiscations including an apartment in Romania were pronounced by the court.

Two notaries from the South-West were acquitted of fraud in an organized gang but sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence for complicity in money laundering. The court did not retain the prohibition to exercise required against one of them, nor the offense of participation in a criminal association targeting certain defendants.

He totally released two of them, in particular an employee of a bank whom the prosecution presented as a "banking facilitator".