A figure in organized crime, the Frenchman Antonio Ferrara was sentenced to 13 years in prison by the Brussels court on Thursday, for a planned robbery in Germany in 2025. Aged 53, Antonio Ferrara is well known to the courts in France, where he was convicted of robberies and attempted murder, as well as for two prison escapes, which earned him the nickname "king of beauty".
With nine co-defendants, he was prosecuted for having planned the armed attack on a stronghold in Bochum (west of Germany), a place where banks store their assets (banknotes, jewelry, etc.). The project was foiled at the last minute by Franco-Belgian police cooperation. On the night of February 26 to 27, 2025, some of the defendants “stopped their progress a few hundred meters from the fort because they saw the flashing lights of the German police services,” described the president of the court.
The case was being judged in Brussels because it was the Belgian police who had foiled the plan by carrying out a large-scale raid in Eupen, in eastern Belgium, not far from the German border. The act was then imminent, according to investigators. Members of the group had already gone to scout the targeted establishment, using stolen cars from which police seized weapons and explosives on the day of their intervention. In 2024, French justice opened an investigation into a criminal association, which ultimately led to this German project in which Antonio Ferrara actively took part, according to the judgment.
A “complete lack of credibility”
To implicate the 10 suspects, the prosecution relied on telephone tapping and multiple surveillance. Concerning Antonio Ferrara, his DNA was “found on the butt of a war weapon and on several objects in a car, balaclava, neck warmer and ammunition”, listed the president of the court. Belgian justice also questioned his “fluctuating and changing declarations” with a “complete lack of credibility”. Antonio Ferrara had notably explained that he was going to Eupen “for the carnival”, noted the president of the court.
During the pronouncement of the judgment, the “king of beauty” was absent for a few minutes, slipping “I’m breaking” while smiling. He finally took his place alongside the other defendants. At the end of August, the Brussels prosecutor's office requested 18 years in prison against him. Released from prison in 2022 in France, after having served his last sentence to date, Antonio Ferrara appeared free in Brussels, after a few months of pre-trial detention last year. The Frenchman of Italian origin contested his participation in the criminal project.
His lawyer Olivier Martins considered that the DNA analyzes were unreliable and assured that his client's trip to Belgium with several friends was intended to buy cars. “No weapon was found in the vehicle where Antonio Ferrara was” during his arrest, Mr. Martins also told AFP shortly before the trial.
Other figures of organized crime involved
Initially scheduled for October 23, the judgment was postponed by two weeks, without explanation from the president of the court. The hearing, which began in the spring of 2026 and which continued beyond the summer break, was marked by multiple procedural incidents and challenges from defense lawyers. Among the nine co-defendants are one of Antonio Ferrara's brothers, Massimiliano, who received nine years in prison, and other figures of organized crime in the Paris region, including Walid Tarsim, sentenced to 10 years in prison.
A suspect of Algerian nationality, Yacine Bentouati, was also on trial for having run over a special units police officer by car while trying to escape the dragnet in Eupen. He received 12 years in prison. The judgment underlined the “professional nature of the facts” and the “extreme violence” represented by the defendants, with “weapons of war, stolen vehicles, stolen license plates, finds of bullet-proof vests and explosives”.
