Crans-Montana fire: the background to the 2008 conviction of manager Jacques Moretti for aggravated pimping

Aged 49, Jacques Moretti has made a name for himself in the world of bars, managing at least three establishments: one in Lens (Pas-de-Calais) and two in Crans-Montana (Switzerland). During New Year’s Eve, one of his bars in the Swiss ski resort, the “Constellation”, went up in smoke. The toll is extremely heavy: 40 dead, mostly young people, and 115 injured, most seriously.

With his wife, Jessica, they are suspected of “breaches” and are “charged with negligent homicide, negligent bodily harm and negligent arson”, indicated the police and the office of the general prosecutor of the canton of Valais, in a press release. However, they were not placed in pre-trial detention and will be interviewed on Friday.

Jacques Moretti, nicknamed “The Corsican”, his island of origin, knows justice and prison. On Monday September 29, 2008, he appeared for aggravated pimping with two other men. And on November 20 of the same year, the high court of Annecy (Haute-Savoie) delivered its deliberations.

According to the report of the judgment that we obtained and that RTL revealed this Thursday, the Bastiais native is then accused of having “hired, trained or diverted” several women in La Clusaz (Haute-Savoie) between the summer of 2004 and November 2005 “with a view to their prostitution”. Then to have “benefited from this prostitution, acted as an intermediary between a person engaging in prostitution and another exploiting or paying for the prostitution of others”.

Also convicted of fraud in the past

The court specifies that the facts “were committed against several people incited to engage in prostitution outside the national territory, in this case in Switzerland, and by several people acting as perpetrators or accomplices without them constituting an organized gang, in this case by recruiting, hiring, fixing the prices and the number of clients”.

More precisely, justice suspects the man, then never convicted, of having installed women (four identified and several others unknown) brought into prostitution in accommodation located rue du Lièvre, in Geneva (Switzerland), in a massage parlor. An address “that he actually managed and for which he had paid the rent and security deposit, with a view to their prostitution”. But also to have recruited women to prostitute themselves in salons run by other men in Bern and Solothurn (Switzerland). In this case “Swiss pimps with whom he was in business”.

Finally, French justice acquitted “Corsican” of the charge of aggravated pimping committed in Switzerland. On the other hand, she found him guilty of the same charge for the events which occurred in France. A sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment, of which eight months were suspended, was imposed on him. However, he did not go to prison, the man having been placed under arrest from November 19, 2005 to March 9, 2006. He was then placed under judicial supervision.

In the more recent past, Jacques Moretti was also sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for fraud. Before that, around thirty years ago, “the Corsican” found himself involved in a case of kidnapping and sequestration, but had not been punished by the courts. According to a police source at Le Parisien, he no longer belonged to the “spectrum of organized crime” since then.