Maximum sentence for officer in drugs raid on police HQ

A senior anti-drugs officer was jailed for ten years today for stealing nearly £2 million of cocaine from a safe in a national police headquarters.

The presiding judge – in handing down the maximum sentence to 36-year-old Jonathan Guyot – said he had been proved guilty “beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

Security guards testified to seeing the officer entering the Préfecture de Police in Paris, which doubles as the Palais de Justice, late at night in July 2014 when the drugs went missing.

Guyot was later seen leaving the building known as 36 quai des Orfèvres carrying two bags and was detained by officers around a week later with £21,000 in cash and the code for a safe saved in his mobile phone, prosecutors said.

The case shocked the Paris force as choking back tears in court on Thursday (March 16), Guyot said he regretted the impact of the case on his family and friends, with his wife, brother and two childhood friends also prosecuted for money-laundering or handling stolen goods.

“I am unable to excuse myself, so I cannot ask them to excuse me,” he said, while continuing to deny that he was responsible for the theft.

The cocaine haul, valued at £1.75 million, remains unaccounted for, but an accomplice, 35-year-old Farid Kharraki, was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday (March 17) for helping sell the cocaine.