On 9 March 2026, 900 gendarmes backed by the GIGN (the French gendarmerie's elite tactical unit) deployed simultaneously across six departments. Their target: Operation "Octopus", against a criminal organisation whose contours were still blurred three years earlier. Forty-two people were arrested. Twenty-six were placed under formal investigation, fifteen of them remanded in custody. Among them: a lawyer. Two rappers. Three alleged leaders. An average age of 28. And, for the first time since the law of 13 June 2025 came into force, an unprecedented criminal qualification was invoked: mafia-style association.

This is the most recent snapshot of what the press and official communiqués alike now call the DZ Mafia. A name that in three years has become the most visible label of French narcobanditism — first in Marseille, then well beyond.

To understand what the DZ Mafia has become, three threads must be held together. The thread of the Marseille ground — the clan war, the extreme rejuvenation of the foot soldiers, the pressure on local businesses. The thread of criminal diversification — international money laundering, infiltration of the rap scene, command-and-control from prison cells. And the thread of the state's response — a new anti-drug-trafficking law, high-security prisons, judicial centralisation in Paris.

Taken in isolation, none of these threads tells the whole story. Together, they describe the mutation of a criminal economy that is no longer a problem of the city's northern districts, but a national one.

From Bangkok to Marseille: the clan war that structures everything

It all began, according to several press accounts, with an altercation. In February 2023, in a Thai nightclub, two men known to Marseille police crossed paths. Mehdi L., known as "Tic", described by certain sources as one of the most powerful figures in the DZ "cupola". Félix Bingui, alleged head of the Yoda clan, the other major narcobanditism structure in Marseille. The incident escalated.

Six months later, in summer 2023, the rivalry between the two groups was already structuring much of Marseille's violence. The annual toll would be heavy: 49 deaths linked to narcobanditism in the region that year. The phrase "bloodbath" took hold in the national press.

This war is not only a territorial struggle. It is also a fight for the label — the name that imposes itself in public space, that terrorises competitors, that draws in recruits. The DZ Mafia claims, communicates, releases videos. In October 2024, one such video circulated on social media: masked men, claiming to speak for the group, publicly denied the group's involvement in two recent murders. The Marseille prosecutor immediately opened an investigation.

The calculation is legible. As the DZ name establishes itself as a criminal brand, the group gains visibility, intimidation power, and pulling power for recruits. This is the "criminal branding" logic that Le Monde documented in October 2024: the DZ Mafia is now a drug-dealing SME turned criminal label with mafia-style ambitions.

The extradition of Félix Bingui from Morocco to France on 22 January 2025 marked a turning point. The Yoda clan's alleged leader, long out of reach, was now in French judicial custody. The Marseille balance of power shifted. The DZ Mafia is no longer competing with Yoda on equal terms — it dominates, and it is scaling up.

Ultra-rejuvenation: the human core of the file

This is probably the most striking fact in public sources from 2024-2025. Not only because it is quantified. Because it says something about a criminal economy that has learned to exploit, on a large scale, the most precarious adolescents of working-class neighbourhoods.

According to the official assessment presented in January 2025, 512 minors were prosecuted in 2024 for participation in drug trafficking in Marseille, with 121 detention warrants issued in that age group. On the ground, these young people are described by investigators as lookouts, small-time dealers, order-preparers, sometimes members of hit teams.

Marseille's chief prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, has publicly taken a position on this:

The position is notable. It implicitly recognises what the UNICEF France report documents more broadly: France too often continues to prosecute these minors as offenders rather than protecting them as victims of criminal exploitation. Judicial and NGO sources report acts that may qualify as sequestration, torture, barbarism and, in some cases, human trafficking.

Rejuvenation is not only quantitative. It is structural. "Uber shit" — uberised home delivery of drugs, ordered by phone — relies largely on these teenage couriers. In 2024, in Marseille, 121 Uber-shit cases were closed, involving 180 couriers of both sexes. The typical profile: young people from the northern or eastern districts, recruited via social media, paid by the trip, who quickly become trapped by debt or threats that block any exit.

This mutation of the trafficking chain into a low-cost platform economy has a collateral effect: it multiplies entry points for minors, and it dilutes responsibility. The order-giver is never the one who delivers. The courier, on the other hand, can be arrested at 15 for carrying a few grams — and end up with a criminal record that follows him for his entire working life.

Diversification: prison, racketeering, hawala, rap

If the DZ Mafia were merely a drug-trafficking operator, it would not mobilise such a legislative and policing arsenal. What worries the institutions is what sources describe as systemic diversification into several parallel economies.

Prison as a command centre. Several investigations have established that alleged DZ Mafia leaders continue to run their operations from their cells. This is precisely what triggered, on 22 February 2024, the opening by the Marseille JIRS (the regional specialised jurisdiction for organised crime) of the investigation that would lead to Octopus two years later. The initial referral came from an investigating judge: he observed that drug-dealing point managers were regularly reporting to an incarcerated cadre. Prison, meant to cut the ties, becomes a coordination platform.

The state responded by creating units for the fight against organised crime (QLCO), very-high-security spaces designed to isolate kingpins from their networks. But the Octopus investigation exposed the dispositive's limits: a lawyer from Lyon was placed under formal investigation and remanded in custody for, according to the prosecution, having allowed an inmate at Vendin-le-Vieil to communicate with the outside — through his phone line, his attorney-client privileged correspondence, and his laptop.

International money laundering. In September 2025, a two-phase Franco-Italian operation dismantled a proximity-money-laundering network directly linked to the DZ Mafia. The seizures were spectacular: 55 kilograms of gold, over €2.4 million in cash, €8 million in total in the first phase. The mechanism uncovered was hawala, an informal money-transfer system based on trust between collectors that leaves no banking trace. The exact opposite of plastic-bag trafficking: a sophisticated, transnational dispositive that brings the DZ Mafia closer to the world's major criminal organisations.

Racketeering and extortion. Beyond street dealing, investigations document growing pressure on shopkeepers, restaurants, rental businesses. Prosecutor Bessone announced in December 2024 that, since 1 October of the same year, 119 arrests and over 100 placements under formal investigation had been carried out across eight cases, particularly involving extortion. Racketeering becomes a steady source of additional revenue. It diversifies the organisation beyond trafficking, and roots it in the legal economic fabric.

Rap and popular culture. During Operation Octopus, two rappers were placed under formal investigation: Dika, released under judicial supervision, and KITKVT, remanded in custody. The investigation seeks to understand the nature of links between certain artists and the organisation — financial flows, staging, communications. The subject is sensitive: it crosses questions of artistic freedom and the presumption of innocence. But it documents a cultural dimension of the hold that goes beyond mere illicit economics.

The law of 13 June 2025: what changed

Faced with this ecosystem, the French state opted for structural toughening. Law no. 2025-532 of 13 June 2025, known as the law aimed at pulling France out of the narcotics trap, is the central tool of this strategy. It was validated in its essentials by the Constitutional Council in its decision of 12 June 2025, with some technical censures.

Three structural changes:

1. The creation of the National Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime (Pnaco). Operational since 5 January 2026 at the Paris judicial court, headed by Vanessa Perrée, this specialised prosecutor's office centralises the most serious organised-crime cases. It coordinates the JIRS — regional specialised jurisdictions like the one in Marseille — on transnational and network cases. It is the organised-crime equivalent of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) created in 2019.

2. The qualification of "mafia-style association". A new criminal charge introduced by the law, it targets structured and durable criminal groups, with a hierarchical organisation and the capacity to impose their will through violence or corruption. According to Gendinfo, the official communication channel of the French gendarmerie, in a release dated 14 March 2026:

This qualification was used in Octopus. If confirmed by trial judges, it opens the way to harsher sentences, broader asset seizures, and a reinforced prison regime.

3. The units for the fight against organised crime (QLCO). Very-high-security prison spaces, designed for identified kingpins. The idea is simple: prevent strategic detainees from continuing to run their networks from their cells. The Vendin-le-Vieil example, where an alleged leader still managed to communicate via his lawyer, shows the dispositive is not watertight. But it marks a rupture with classic detention regimes.

The overall logic is to target the top of the spectrum: no longer settling for arresting dealing-point managers, but moving up to the kingpins, the launderers, the investors. This is precisely what Octopus attempted to accomplish. It is also the strategy defended by the Pnaco's chief prosecutor as she took office. Whether the institutions can keep pace remains to be seen.

Marseille justice: the blind spot of corruption

On 12 March 2026, Le Monde published an investigation with a dry headline: Faced with the DZ Mafia, Marseille justice exposed to corruption risk. The article quotes Olivier Leurent, president of the Marseille judicial court:

The stakes are central. Repressing an organisation like the DZ Mafia rests on trust in the integrity of the institutions that fight it: magistrates, court clerks, judicial police officers, prison guards. When illicit file consultations are documented, when a lawyer is placed under formal investigation for facilitating communications from prison, the edifice weakens.

This is not an isolated crisis. Isabelle Couderc, deputy president in charge of coordinating the organised-crime section of the Marseille JIRS, had already warned in the Senate report of 7 May 2024:

The statement is strong. It comes from a specialist magistrate on the front line. It does not say the war is lost, but that it is on track to be lost for want of resources. The creation of the Pnaco a year and a half later appears, in this context, as a political response to that admission. Whether it proves effective remains to be measured.

Marseille's illuminated Vélodrome stadium, a symbol of the city, stands in the background of a starry night.
Marseille's Vélodrome stadium illuminated at night, symbolizing the city amid ongoing concerns over corruption in the justice system.
Marseille's illuminated Vélodrome stadium, a symbol of the city, stands against a starry night sky.

The numbers worth knowing

To grasp the scale of the DZ Mafia phenomenon without getting locked into the Marseille narrative, it has to be placed in a national economy.

According to the Senate report of 7 May 2024, the French narcotics market represents between €3 and €6 billion annually, and 240,000 people live directly or indirectly off it, according to an estimate drawn from Insee data. The OFDT (French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction), separately, documents 1.1 million annual cocaine users in France.

These orders of magnitude reframe the reading. Marseille violence is not only a problem of certain neighbourhoods. It is the visible tip of a massive national economy — one that consumes, demands, finances. Without a serious policy on demand, alongside supply repression, the war of alleged leaders will replay itself, generation after generation.

Specifically in Marseille, the TREND report of the OFDT documents for 2024:

  • the installation of new sales points in the city centre — beyond the historical housing estates;
  • stable prices: €50 for cocaine at street-level dealing points, €70-80 in delivery or party settings;
  • the closure of 29 dealing points, their number falling from 161 in 2023 to 84 in 2024 according to the police prefect;
  • over 2,000 people placed under formal investigation for drug-related offences in Marseille in 2024.

The policing effort is massive. The result is measured. Prosecutor Bessone summed it up soberly in December 2024: "Problems won't be solved tomorrow morning, but we have results."

The first trial and its ambiguities

On 23 March 2026, under very high security, the first major assize trial linked to alleged DZ Mafia leaders opened in Aix-en-Provence. The case under judgment: a double assassination committed in 2019, near Marseille — that of Farid Tir and Mohamed Amine Bendjaghlouli. Two defendants in the dock: Gabriel Ory, known as "Gaby", a 31-year-old Marseille native presented by several sources as one of the alleged "founding fathers" of the group; and Amine Oualane, known as "Mamine", another alleged historical figure.

The prosecution requested life imprisonment for Gabriel Ory, accused of having transmitted to the gunmen the access codes to the hotel where the murders took place. It requested 18 years for Amine Oualane for participation in a criminal conspiracy.

The verdict came on 14 April 2026. Gabriel Ory was sentenced to 25 years in prison — below the requisition, but heavy. Amine Oualane was acquitted in this specific case. An essential clarification: the acquittal concerns the case tried. Amine Oualane remains detained for other cases, and the acquittal does not amount to a general innocence on the broader range of judicial suspicions against him.

The chief prosecutor of the Aix-en-Provence court of appeal, Franck Rastoul, denounced at the end of the trial "a drift in organised-crime matters turning assize courts into a judicial boxing ring." The remark says two things. First, that Marseille justice is under continuous pressure — verbal, intimidating, sometimes physical. Second, that the political promise of repression at the level of the phenomenon is running into the reality of hearings held in increasingly tense conditions.

Is the DZ Mafia fracturing?

On 12 January 2026, Le Monde noted a detail that may seem anecdotal but that investigators take seriously: after the very violent assault of a teenager in Marseille, a new tag appeared on the walls. DZNG — for DZ New Generation. The acronym signals a possible internal fracture within the organisation.

The phenomenon is hardly unusual in large criminal structures. As an organisation grows, accumulates arrests of its cadres, diversifies its activities, internal tensions emerge. Younger generations challenge their elders, certain lieutenants want autonomy, personal cases create fractures. The Dutch Mocro Maffia, the Mexican cartels, the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta have all gone through these splintering phases.

For the investigation, this fragmentation cuts both ways. It can weaken the main organisation by dividing it. It can also multiply actors, complicate chains of command, trigger new waves of violence between rival factions. In Marseille as elsewhere, internal wars are often deadlier than external ones.

Operation Octopus, by targeting the three alleged leaders of the "triumvirate" identified by the gendarmerie — Amine O., Gabriel O. and Madhi Z. —, may accelerate these fracture dynamics. The coming weeks will tell. The recent trajectory of the Mehdi case in Marseille, where three bullets led to two irreconcilable versions of the same scene, is a reminder that violence does not subside by decree.

Should we say "mafia"?

The debate is livelier than it appears. On one side, French institutions now embrace the word. The Ministry of Justice promotes the Pnaco. Gendinfo uses the phrase "mafia-style association" without caveats. The Marseille prosecutor speaks of a structured Marseille criminal organisation. The press follows.

On the other side, academic research reminds us that the qualification deserves caution. A doctoral thesis project under way at the Cnam (the French National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts) focuses precisely on the traditional dichotomy mafia / criminal network, and defends the idea that the criminological stabilisation of the term "mafia" requires criteria the DZ Mafia does not meet in full: multi-secular historical duration, deep social rootedness, capacity to substitute itself for the state in certain territories, ritualised codes of conduct.

The cautious position — defended by Mediapart and Marsactu in 2025 under the headline "Trafics: what is the DZ Mafia the name of?" — is to consider the DZ Mafia label as a journalistic and self-claimed construction, designating a clearly identified social and criminal reality, without joining the classic definitions. This is also what editorial rigour recommends: using the name because it has imposed itself, without overstating the comparison with Italian or Japanese mafia organisations.

What comes next?

The year 2026 has only just begun. Several trials are expected in the coming months, as the Octopus cases reach judgment. The Pnaco's centralisation will be tested in practice. The first applications of the mafia-style association qualification will be scrutinised by defence lawyers and trial judges. The question of judicial resources will remain central: Marseille justice remains saturated, and the chief prosecutor of Aix launched in January 2025 what he called a "judicial SOS".

Several structural questions still await their answers:

On minors. Will the protection-rather-than-prosecution policy defended by Prosecutor Bessone translate into the practices of the youth judicial protection service (PJJ) and the prosecutor's offices? UNICEF France continues to demand a paradigm shift.

On prison. Will the QLCOs be enough to cut kingpins off from their networks, or will more be needed? As detailed in our analysis of French prisons, the prison system faces a chronic saturation that also weighs on the management of high-risk profiles.

On corruption. How many cases of illicit file consultations, professional complicities, turned officers? Does the state have the tools to address this institutional risk at the level investigators describe?

On demand. As long as 1.1 million French people consume cocaine each year, and the national market runs between €3 and €6 billion, supply will rebuild. Repressing supply does not exhaust the subject.

Prosecutor Bessone, in December 2024, put it without pathos: "Problems won't be solved tomorrow morning, but we have results." That is an honest reading. Three years after the public emergence of the DZ Mafia, the state has changed its tools. The group has changed its scale. What comes next will play out in the next hearings, the next detentions, the next generations recruited — or protected.

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