Just over 28,000 illegally sold surgical masks were seized and three people arrested on Thursday in Paris, according to police and judicial sources.
Police discovered these 28,400 masks in a phone store in the capital's 10th arrondissement, one of the sources reported.
A little before 12 p.m., the police spotted two people in a car, before checking them and then following them until they attended a mask transaction, under the coat, with a manager of a telephone store. mobile.
If the amount and the volume of the transaction turned out to be modest (50 masks for 40 euros), the police nevertheless decided to intervene and by searching the premises of the telephone shop, they came across a whole stock of surgical masks in 14 boxes stored there.
The discovery of this stock led the two buyers and the seller to the police station.
The Paris prosecution said it had opened an investigation of the heads of deceptive marketing practices and refused to comply with an administrative request.
Since the requisition of the stocks by the French State, several cases of illegal sales of masks have been handled by the police and the justice system, in Paris as elsewhere in the country.