“Mexicanisation” of Macron’s France Drug cartels, cryptocurrency and bullets

On 15 May 2024, two officers of the French prison service were shot dead during an ambush on a prison van by armed assailants. Several other guards were wounded. The attack, reminiscent of a scene from a Hollywood action film, was carried out to free drug trafficker Mohamed Amra.

The following day, on 16 May, a delegation of Mexican politicians arrived in France with a stark warning — Paris must take urgent action if it does not wish to find itself “in the same situation as Mexico within a few years”, where entire regions are under the control of drug cartels. The statement drew a dismissive rebuke from the Paris prosecutor, who declared that “there is no place for such things in his country.”

By April 2025, around 65 attacks on French prisons had been recorded. These included shootings and arson incidents claimed by a mysterious organisation calling itself “Defence of the Rights of French Prisoners” (défense des droits des prisonniers français, or DDPF). According to the Libération newspaper, such methods are typical of drug cartels using intimidation tactics.

On 4 May 2025, France’s current Minister of Justice and former Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, admitted in a YouTube interview: “There are no longer any ‘safe’ places in France […]. Drug trafficking has become widespread — the evil has metastasised. […] Today it is painfully clear — there is not a single city or rural commune untouched by cocaine, cannabis…”

Across France in recent years, at least 16 hotspots of crime and violence have been identified — from Nîmes, where a 10-year-old boy was killed in a drug-related incident in 2023, to Paris, where shocking statistics on murders and vandalism are published almost daily.

Previously, shootouts between drug gangs were concentrated in Marseille, but they have since become more frequent in Grenoble and are now spreading to cities such as Poitiers, Valence, Clermont-Ferrand, and Vieux-Urban.

In Valence, a 22-year-old man was shot dead and two others were injured while waiting in line outside a nightclub during a Halloween party. The following day, an 18-year-old youth was killed in a suburb of Valence.

In Villeurbanne, a suburb of Lyon, a man was shot dead in November 2024, while in Clermont-Ferrand, a teenager was left in critical condition after being shot in the head. Just a year earlier, Grenoble had been hailed as the “French Silicon Valley” — a symbol of Emmanuel Macron’s “start-up nation.” Yet only nine months later, The Spectator described the city as one of the most dangerous places in France.

The drug mafia has even infiltrated the ranks of local government. Mélanie Boulanger, the former mayor of the town of Canteleu and a member of the Socialist Party, has stood trial on charges of complicity in drug trafficking. Investigators believe she had ties to the Meziani clan — a family that ruled the city’s drug trade with an iron fist in the area near Rouen.

In June 2024, prosecutors requested a one-year suspended prison sentence for Boulanger, along with a five-year ban from holding public office and a €10,000 fine. The media drew attention to the remarkably lenient sentence handed down to an official linked to drug trafficking.

Beyond drug smuggling, organised crime in France has increasingly targeted the cryptocurrency sector. The most high-profile incident involved the attempted abduction of a mother and her child in broad daylight on a Paris street on 13 May 2025. According to the AFT news agency, citing police sources, the victims were the daughter and grandson of a CEO of a cryptocurrency firm. Three hooded assailants grabbed them and forced them into a van. Just two days earlier, the father of another crypto entrepreneur had been kidnapped.

One of the victims had a finger severed as part of a ransom demand, prompting analyst Alexandre Regnaud to declare that France had entered a phase of “Mexicanisation” — a term used to describe the infiltration of cartel-style methods into the European environment.

Jérôme Mathis, Professor of Economics and Finance at Paris-Dauphine University, noted that the process of “Mexicanisation” is spreading from France to other countries — both within the EU and beyond: “We have already observed this elsewhere in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, the United States, Latin American - Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela - or in Africa, like in Nigeria.” Of the 50 attacks on individuals connected to cryptocurrency recorded over the past year, 14 occurred in France.

Experts stress that crypto entrepreneurs have become deliberate targets. The very features of digital currencies — anonymity, speed of transfer, and the untraceable nature of transactions — make them highly attractive to criminal groups using them as tools for extortion and ransom.

As one expert remarked: “There may be a kind of myth around cryptocurrencies today. Just as jewellers don’t all have diamonds at home, crypto entrepreneurs aren't all millionaires.”

As a result of this growing threat, France is becoming an increasingly dangerous environment for investors in the cryptocurrency sector — just as this financial instrument is gaining major significance in the global economy.

The Minister of the Interior, conservative politician Bruno Retailleau, announced that he would propose new measures to ensure the safety of participants in the cryptocurrency market: “We will act together to protect them. And we will find the criminals, wherever they may be — even abroad.”

Among the proposed measures are closer cooperation between police forces and crypto companies, granting industry leaders priority access to emergency services, and expert assessments of the security of their residences. A long-term programme to raise safety standards across the sector is also planned.

Professionals will be able to attend specialised briefings involving elite police units. The Digital Assets Development Association, one of the largest in the industry, has pledged to raise awareness among its members about modern personal security practices.

The Paris prosecutor’s office has already announced the arrest of seven members of a criminal group involved in the kidnapping of David Balland, co-founder of Ledger — a company specialising in hardware crypto wallets. A new high-security prison is now under construction in French Guiana to house criminals of this kind, with a capacity for 60 inmates. The facility, scheduled for completion in 2028, has a projected budget of over €400 million. It will accommodate particularly dangerous convicts linked to drug trafficking.

Retailleau has good reason to be concerned: the surge in crimes connected to drug trafficking and cryptocurrencies is hitting France at a highly inconvenient time.

This coming weekend, internal party elections will be held. Retailleau hopes that members of the centre-right Republicans party will elect him as their leader — a victory that could pave the way for his candidacy in the 2027 presidential election, once Emmanuel Macron's second and final term comes to an end.