Several photovoltaic power plants located in Gironde and in several departments of Aquitaine, Poitou-Charentes and Occitanie, have been victims of massive theft of electrical cables since August 2026. Following a legal operation carried out in the Gironde department, on November 3, 2026, six individuals, aged 19 to 45, were arrested.
It is a resource that is now worth gold, and which is highly sought after. Through a press release, the public prosecutor of Bordeaux, Renaud Gaudeul, announces the dismantling of a network of theft of copper cables in photovoltaic parks, installed in a majority of the departments of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region.
According to the Bordeaux judicial court, several photovoltaic power plants in Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Dordogne, Charente, Charente-Maritime and Gers, have been victims of massive theft of electrical cables since August 2026. Across all of the affected parks, the modus operandi of the thugs is the same: carrying out "damage to the fences during nighttime raids" to "enter isolated sites in full of forest, quite far from homes.
At the end of these multiple thefts, the Bordeaux public prosecutor's office specifies that it opened an investigation on August 21, 2026, entrusted to the research brigade of the national gendarmerie in Lesparre-Medoc. The investigations carried out by the latter made it possible to identify "13 similar incidents of theft of more than 500 kilometers of copper cables", for damage which, according to the public prosecutor of Bordeaux, "already well exceeds one million euros". Still according to this same source, this "well-organized" team of thieves operated from municipalities in the Bordeaux region towards the departments of Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Dordogne, Charente, Charente-Maritime and Gers.
On November 3, 2026, a large-scale legal operation was then carried out in the Gironde department. More than 100 soldiers intervened, from the Gironde gendarmerie companies, the services of the Gironde gendarmerie group and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine gendarmerie region, as well as the Marmande mobile gendarmerie squadron and the Mérignac air transport gendarmerie. At the end of this operation, "six individuals, men aged 19 to 45, of Romanian nationality, already known to the courts and domiciled" on Gironde territory, were arrested.
According to Renaud Gaudeul, the investigations carried out "during these police custody measures have already made it possible to identify other victims of these actions". On Friday November 6, 2026, the six individuals arrested were referred to the Bordeaux public prosecutor's office and presented to an investigating judge. They were indicted “on counts of organized theft and participation in a criminal association with a view to preparing a crime”. The Bordeaux judicial court specifies that the six individuals were placed in pre-trial detention.
Still according to this same source, the theft of electrical copper cables has become an "emerging phenomenon": in addition to the financial damage for operators, these thefts lead to "long-term shutdowns of electricity production from these power plants". According to the press release, these offenses and crimes take place "in a context of a significant increase in the world price of copper, having doubled in just five years, causing increased predation of rights-of-way containing cable networks". Copper is becoming an extremely strategic metal, whether in construction or electronics, but also now in other sectors such as ecological transition or defense. According to our colleagues from the newspaper Le Monde, the price of copper has jumped 30% in one year.
From January to September 2026, more than 400 cases of theft of copper cables were recorded in the gendarmerie zone in New Aquitaine according to the Bordeaux public prosecutor.
