After seven years of investigation, two Parisian investigating judges decided, Tuesday, August 31, to refer eleven people – including Jean-François Federici, a figure of Corsican banditry – to court – for embezzlement committed within the gaming circle Parisian Le Cadet, closed since, as reported by the site Blast-info.fr.
It all started with an anonymous information reaching the central racing and games service affirming that in April 2010, a man named Serge Kasparian had received funds for the reopening of the Cadet by joining forces with Jean-François Federici and his brother Ange- Toussaint. Two men known for their belonging to the island environment and already convicted: the first for embezzlement committed at the Concorde circle, the ancestor of the Cadet; the second for an assassination committed against a background of conflict in the management of slot machines in the south of France. According to this same information, the agreement would have been negotiated through the intermediary of Ange-Toussaint’s son, Augustin Federici, whom Mr. Kasparian would have met on several occasions in a parking lot in front of the Cadet circle, during 2011.
Despite the reversals of Mr. Kasparian during the investigation, the investigating magistrates became certain that the Federici clan had retained the upper hand over the revenues of the Cadet circle, which, like other gaming establishments before it, constituted an important source of cash. During the investigation, Serge Kasparian will even evoke a meeting with Jean-François Federici at the restaurant La Coupole, in Paris, in 2012, who would then have indicated to him that the circle was their property. If Serge Kasparian in certain interrogations reported the sums given to the benefit of the Federici clan – to the tune of nearly 2 million euros between February 2013 and October 2014, he then reconsidered some of his statements.
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After having initially recognized Jean-François Federici on the photographic album which was presented to him by the investigators, he retracted during the confrontation which took place with the latter and two of his lieutenants, Daniel Giabiconi and Jacques Valliccioni. “I think that in the context of the time, and given my psychological state, all the statements that I could make about these gentlemen, you have to take them in the second degree”, he said then.
In their order for referral, the magistrates note that “In this context, we cannot exclude that these reversals are linked to the threat that the identified Corsican clan and more particularly the tutelary figure of Jean-François Federici can represent”. As for Jean-François Federici and his cronies, they contested any link with the Cadet circle. Heard during the investigation, one of the protagonists will call Mr. Kasparian a mythomaniac and accuse him of having “Found the perfect scapegoats: in the collective imagination, the Corsicans are presumed guilty”.
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