Police confiscate 140,000 black market face masks in France

The Police in France have intervened to ensure that face masks provided for health workers are not hoarded or diverted by desperate business racketeers. Accordingly, the Police confiscated 140,000 face masks traced to black market in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

The French government had banned the resale of protective masks to prioritise their distribution to health workers in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Police source was said to have disclosed on Sunday that two persons were arrested at a transaction point they were offloading boxes in Saint-Denis, North Paris.

One of the arrested suspects was said to have identified himself as a business owner, insisting that he bought the masks, including 5,000 high protection FFP2 masks, in the Netherlands at the cost of 80,000 euros ($87,000).

The police revealed that the arrested business persons planned to sell the masks to construction workers at huge profit margin.

It was recalled that in March, 32,500 masks from China were seized from a warehouse near Paris and 28,800 masks were discovered in a shop in a district of Chinese wholesalers, also in the Paris region.