entry into office of the Pnaco

A new judicial actor enters the scene in the fight against organized crime. On Monday January 5, 2026, a national prosecutor’s office specially dedicated to these cases was created. Its mission: to better coordinate investigations into the most powerful networks, particularly those of drug trafficking. After the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), launched in 2014, and the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat), in 2019, the National Anti-Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office (Pnaco) is the latest to join the restricted circle of specialized judicial prosecutor’s offices. Could he change the situation?

In the wake of the anti-drug trafficking law passed in June 2025, justice is strengthening its arsenal in the face of a phenomenon deemed out of control. The authorities are now talking about “narcoterrorism” combining money laundering, corruption and violence, illustrated by the assassination last November of Mehdi Kessaci, brother of an anti-trafficking activist. Nearly 240,000 people in France live directly or indirectly from drugs, including around 21,000 full-time. The annual turnover of this business: between 3 and 7 billion euros.

The arrival of Pnaco marks a turning point. This is the first time that a jurisdiction has coordinated the most serious cases on a national scale. Nearly 170 files have already landed in the office of prosecutor Vanessa Perrée, at the head of a team of around twenty magistrates and clerks.

The Mohamed Amra affair

To measure its importance, let’s return to an emblematic case. In May 2024, Mohamed Amra, a repeat offender, escaped during a transfer thanks to accomplices who killed two prison officers on this occasion. Considered a second-level offender, the man had already been convicted by several courts. Due to a lack of coordination between services, the scale of its network had gone under the radar. After nine months on the run, he was finally arrested in Romania. In a situation of this type, the new national prosecutor’s office is specifically intended to avoid the loss of information between the courts. By centralizing the elements, by cross-referencing surveys, it can detect earlier that a person is in reality at the heart of a structured network.

Pnaco also serves as an entry point for foreign partners. “If a Colombian colleague knows of a sector ready to irrigate the Côte d’Azur, he can alert us more easily,” explains a magistrate specializing in the fight against organized crime.

It also has new tools, such as the possibility of prosecuting an individual solely for their membership in a mafia organization, such as the DZ Mafia, a Marseille gang which operates in drugs, extortion and murder. A useful device when physical evidence linking a person to a specific transaction is difficult to establish.

There remains the question of means. The volumes processed by criminal organizations are considerable. Globally, cocaine production doubled between 2020 and 2025, becoming the most lucrative drug market in France. On the cannabis side, where the delivery of a tonne once constituted a major operation, an intermediary trafficker is today capable of bringing in several tonnes.

In this context, the market is expanding, becoming more complex and attracting new players – competition is sometimes resolved through extreme violence to control customers and territories. “The number of consumers is such that trafficking remains profitable, even in the event of losses,” analyzes Yann Bisiou, lecturer in private law and criminal sciences at Paul-Valéry University in Montpellier.

According to him, we must not focus solely on repression but above all strengthen prevention among users, at a time when 900,000 people smoke cannabis daily in France and 1.1 million have consumed cocaine according to the latest figures for 2023, twice as many as in 2017.

Seizure of criminal assets

The Pnaco should also make it possible to better use a particularly dissuasive lever: the seizure of criminal assets. This mission is the responsibility of the Agency for the Management and Recovery of Seized and Confiscated Assets (Agrasc). In 2024, the agency recovered 79 million euros from bank accounts, real estate or jewelry acquired through drug trafficking. “After the announcement of a conviction, traffickers are more often worried about the fate of their luxury car than about their prison sentence,” underlines our magistrate.

The Pnaco will therefore only be one piece of a larger puzzle. The fight against drug trafficking will not only be won in the courts, but also in mentalities, financial flows and in the country’s capacity to reduce consumption.