The Guerinis gained enough power and status from their role in smashing the 1947 strike to emerge as the new leaders of the Corsican underworld. But while the CIA was instrumental in restoring the Corsican underworld's political power, it was not until the 1950 dock strike that the Guerinis gained enough power to take control of the Marseille waterfront. This combination of political influence and control of the docks created the perfect environmental conditions for the growth of Marseille's heroin laboratories, fortuitously at exactly the same time that Mafia boss Lucky Luciano was seeking an alternate source of heroin supply.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Selected Excerpts from
THE GREAT HEROIN COUP - DRUGS, INTELLIGENCE AND INTERNATIONAL FASCISM
By Henrik Kruger; Jerry Meldon, Translator
South End Press©1980: Box 68 Astor Station, Boston, MA 02123
ISBN 0-89608-0319-5
240pps - one edition - out-of-print; Orginally published in Danish
Smukke Serge og Heroien; Bogan 1976
Previous chapters:
CHAPTER NINE
THE HEROIN TRAILS
As the 1970s began the French were the undisputed kingpins of the
international narcotics traffic. Opium, the raw material, was extracted from
the poppy harvest by the Turks, who either converted it themselves into
morphine base, or sent it to refineries in Syria and Lebanon. Essentially all
morphine base made from Turkish opium went to Marseille's heroin laboratories.
Until around 1966 it went by sea. But Marseille's harbor was too easily
patrolled, and so after 1966 roughly 70 percent of the morphine base went via
Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to Munich.
For the first half of this century, most Marseille heroin was sent to
Tangiers, Morocco, the main embarkation point for drugs bound for the United
States. Tangiers eventually gave way to such European ports as Barcelona,
Lisbon, and Antwerp. In addition some of the heroin went by air.
At the close of the sixties there began what at first resembled a routine
adjustment in the narcotics traffic. As time would show, however, this one
involved such a colossal upheaval, that it might better be described as a
tremendous political coup—yet a coup that apparently went unnoticed. At its
source lay shifts in international politics, and friction between the CIA and
the French SDECE. Later I will support this claim with a myriad of
circumstantial evidence.
The United States, during the first presidential administration of Richard
Nixon, began cracking down on Turkish opium cultivation.
While it
slowed the delivery of morphine base to Marseille, the Corsicans then — and
now — had other sources to tap. They had long been connected closely with the
Chinese Mafia. The latter organized the production of enormous quantities of
opium on the rugged hillsides of the Burma‑Laos‑Thailand junction known as the
Golden Triangle.[1]
The sale of harvested opium is in the hands of well‑organized Chiu Chao
Chinese from the region between Canton and Fukien in southeast China. Hundreds
of thousands of these Chinese emigrated to Southeast Asia, where they have
resisted assimilation and control by local authorities.
The Golden Triangle accounted, until very recently, for some two-thirds of
the world's illicit opium production, or 1300 tons of opium annually—enough to
produce 130 tons of heroin at a retail value on the U.S. market of between 50
and 120 billion dollars. Conservative estimates place the yearly heroin
consumption of U.S. addicts between twelve and twenty tons. The New York street
price lies in the neighborhood of $300,000/kilo (1 kilo = 2.2 pounds), but many
pushers dilute the heroin up to three or four times. The same kilo can then
bring in close to $1 million.
A major slice of the profits of
organized crime in the U.S. derives from the wholesaling of illegal drugs. The
trafficking of heroin, cocaine, morphine base, etc., along with marijuana,
hash, LSD and other hallucinogens, yields an annual turnover estimated as high
as $75 billion.[2] That is an enormous sum, even in the context of the U.S.
economy.
In the golden era that culminated, at the start of 1970, with Christian
David joining the Ricord gang hierarchy, Marcel Francisci and Dominique Venturi
led the Corsican Mafia, and Jo Cesari was the wizard of the Marseille labs.
They were but the visible portion of the iceberg. The other 99 percent was
comprised of politicians and men of responsibility and influence in French
intelligence.
"Mr. Heroin" Francisci was the man with the international
perspective, with direct connections to politicians and the capos of the
Italian Mafia. When international agreements were to be made, Francisci usually
did the negotiating. Venturi and Joseph Orsini were in charge of effectively
all drug import and export.
Distribution is the Key
There were five main heroin export routes to the U.S.A., two by air and
three by sea. The shipping lanes emanated from Barcelona, Lisbon, and Antwerp
and either ended in Brazil/ Paraguay, Haiti and the French West Indies, or went
directly to the east coast of the United States. Heroin smuggled into the U.S.
from the French Antilles and Haiti, like that from Paraguay, went via Florida
or Mexico.
The busiest air lanes were from Luxembourg and Madrid to either Montreal or
Nassau.[3] Dominique Venturi's brother Jean received the shipments in Montreal,
but was obliged to pass them on to the Cotroni family. Led by brothers
Giuseppe, Vincent and Frank, the latter clan transported the heroin to the
U.S.A., and distributed it to the big time pushers in New York.
Heroin leaving Haiti, the Antilles, Nassau, and the Paraguay-based Ricord
Mob wound up in Florida, where Santo Trafficante, jr. and the Cuban Mafia
controlled the drug business in an axis that became the U.S.A.'s most powerful
narcotics organization.
For years the Corsicans had tried setting up their own U.S. network, but
were repeatedly foiled. It might have been easier for them to get around the
Italians and Cubans by way of Mexico, had the Cotroni and Trafficante
organizations not also decided to enter the picture there. At a grand assembly
of mobsters from Marseille, Montreal, New York and Miami, the rules were fixed
for smuggling via Mexico. The site of the meeting was Acapulco, the time was
early 1970. Representing the French were Jean Venturi, Jean‑Baptiste Croce and
Paul Mondolini. Croce and Mondolini became the Corsicans' permanent men in
Mexico.
The tight control over the U.S. market wielded by the Cotronis of Montreal
and Trafficante of Tampa was a legacy of Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano's
reorganization of the U.S. heroin market. Lansky built himself a fantastic
empire headquartered in Havana, and literally governed Cuba over the head of
the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Lansky became the world's uncrowned narcotics
king. His decisions affected everyone, including the bigwigs in France and
Italy. He invested in the Marseille labs and had the Corsicans reorganize
themselves more efficiently. When Castro drove him from Cuba, Lansky created a
similar gambling paradise in Nassau.
Nassau
became a focal point in more ways than one. Besides the gambling take, the
greater part of the incredible bonanza from U.S. narcotics deals-‑the Corsicans'
share included-‑was laundered via Lansky's Miami National Bank, to Nassau, and
on to numbered accounts in Switzerland and Lebanon.
The Lansky fortune is estimated at $2 billion. Unable to reenter the U.S.
in 1970, Lansky took temporary refuge in Israel, which eventually refused him
citizenship. It is difficult to say how much of his power he retains. His
operation has apparently been taken over by former subordinates. In narcotics
they are the Montreal Cotroni family and, above all, Santo Trafficante, jr. in
Florida, the man to whom the Ricord/David Mob consigned enormous quantities of
heroin.
Notes
1. In the 30 August 1963
issue of Life, Stanley Karnow named
Bonaventure Francisci the kingpin of opium smuggling from Laos. According to
Alain Jaubert (Dossier D ... comme
Drogue, Alain Moreau, 1974), it was impossible to determine whether
Bonaventure and Marcel Francisci were related.
2. F.A.J.
lanni: Black Mafia (Simon and
Schuster, 1974) lanni's estimate is the highest I have seen. The wide range of estimates
demonstrates that no one really knows, or is even close to knowing, how great
the narcotics handle is. 3. It was often little things which made a smuggling
route especially attractive. For example, former French heroin smuggler Richard
Berdin recalls his colleague Andre Labay's description of the important role
played by the men's room at Nassau airport: "It's a small airport, and
there's a common waiting room, which means that after I've gone through English
customs I go straight to the American side, armed with apiece of hand luggage
containing nothing but toiletries and the usual knick‑knacks. There I check my
baggage through to Miami. Assuming they check my hand bag, they'll wrap some
kind of selfadhesive ticket around the handle to show it's been OK'd. I'll
arrange my flight schedule so that my plane for Miami doesn't leave for at
least an hour after our arrival in Nassau. So now I go back to the passenger
lounge to wait for my flight. We meet in the men's room, where we exchange the
contents of our hand luggage. Now I've got the merchandise, safely stashed in a
piece of luggage bearing the customs seal of approval. When my flight is
called, I climb aboard the last leg of the trip without a worry in the world. I
don't see how it could miss." (R. Berdin: Code Named Richard, Dutton, 1974).
------------------
------------------
CHAPTER TEN
THE PURSUIT OF THE CORSICANS BEGINS
When Charles de Gaulle retired, and Georges Pompidou was elected president
of France in 1969, improvement of Franco‑American relations was high on
Pompidou's agenda. In early 1970 he flew to Washington. There he met with
President Nixon and, on several occasions, publicly cautioned against U.S.
withdrawal from Europe.
Upon returning to France he went straight to work eliminating the greatest obstacle to Franco‑American partnership. He appointed Alexandre de Marenches head of the SDECE and told him to clean it up. De Marenches responded by firing 815 men throughout the intelligence agency. He then chose Colonel Paul Ferrer alias Fournier as his right‑hand man, and the two began to reorganize.
 |
| Subject of Dec. 1971 talks in Portuguese Azores was the "international monetary crisis." |
Upon returning to France he went straight to work eliminating the greatest obstacle to Franco‑American partnership. He appointed Alexandre de Marenches head of the SDECE and told him to clean it up. De Marenches responded by firing 815 men throughout the intelligence agency. He then chose Colonel Paul Ferrer alias Fournier as his right‑hand man, and the two began to reorganize.
Pompidou himself despised several longtime espionage figures, primarily
because of their role in a ruthless smear campaign waged against him prior to
the 1969 election. In the course of the campaign tampered photos were
circulated showing Madame Pompidou in the company of film star Alain Delon's
bodyguard, Stefan Markovic— who had been murdered in 1968—and in compromising
positions with men and women alike. Names that turned up repeatedly throughout
the scandal included Colonel Roger Barberot and SDECE agents Captain Paul
Santenac and Roger Delouette, three arch‑Gallists from Jacques Foccart's inner
circle.[1] Santenac had promoted the presidential candidacy of de Gaulle's son,
Rear Admiral Philippe de Gaulle, who eventually refused the nomination.
Barberot, who had returned from Uruguay in 1968 to help smother the May student
insurrection, directed the Bureau pour le Developpement de la Production
Agricole (BDPA), a front for Foccart's secret financial transactions.[2]
Pompidou had to watch his step while eliminating powerful enemies because
most of them enjoyed the support of a large segment of the Gaullist party.
Still, with U.S. help, he used the next couple of years to choke off the worst
of the resistance. The SDECE was ordered to cooperate with the CIA; SAC was cut
back severely, the brunt borne by its criminal contingent; and the Corsican
Mafia's power was systematically reduced.
Foccart himself was too formidable to take on frontally. His economic
power, great influence, and dossiers on other politicians made him effectively
untouchable. Nevertheless, he apparently compromised and went along with
Pompidou on several counts.
Pompidou struck at the gangsters and shadier elements of the SDECE and SAC
through their most vulnerable point-‑their wallets. One subject Pompidou had
discussed with Nixon on his U.S. tour was the war on drugs. Nixon had described
the dimensions of the problem and asked for Pompidou's assistance in stopping
the heroin flow from Marseille. Since it suited his plans perfectly, Pompidou
had agreed. Reducing the Corsican Mafia's profits would also limit its
political influence. But a project of that magnitude could not be accomplished
overnight. Preparations had to be made.
Had Pompidou suspected what really lay in store internationally, he would
certainly have had second thoughts. The, outcome of that pact slowly began to
emerge in 1970. In the two years that followed it struck home with the force of
an avalanche.
Auguste Ricord
On 18 October 1970 a Cessna four‑seater landed at Miami International
airport. Registered in Argentina, the plane was one of hundreds of Paraguayan
"contrabandistas" smuggling goods to and from eighty landing strips
in Florida. U.S. customs agents, tipped off that the plane would be worth
inspecting, emerged from hiding as the pilot crawled from the cockpit.
"No bandito!" screamed
the pilot, Cesar Bianchi.
But he was just that, as the agents discovered three cases containing a
total of forty‑five kilos of heroin in the tail of the plane. To save his skin,
Bianchi agreed to cooperate. He continued on his normal route, but with agents
now on his tail. First he met his Miami contact, Felix Becker. Then Bianchi,
Becker and a third man, Aron Muravnik, flew to New York to meet Pierre Gahou of
the Ricord network, and finally the U.S. wholesalers.
By October 27 the heroin deal was closed and Gahou was about to fly to
Paraguay with the money. But before he could depart, agents moved in and caught
six men in their net. The catch was better than anticipated. Bianchi shot off
at the mouth like a machine‑gun as wide-eyed customs agents heard the story of
Ricord's elaborate narcotics ring.
In the ensuing four months stacks of proof were assembled against Ricord.
Finally, in March 1971 the United States demanded his extradition. But a
military plane dispatched to Asuncion for the gangster kingpin returned without
its prize. Paraguayan President Stroessner had decided that if Ricord were
imprisoned it would be in Paraguay. "El Viejo" Ricord was then set up
in a comfortable cell containing a spring mattress, radio and TV, and was
allowed visits any time night or day. Waiters brought food from his own restaurant,
and he continued managing his businesses in the quiet of prison.
Stroessner only capitulated in the summer of 1972 when the United States
threatened a sharp cutback in aid to Paraguay. On September 3, Ricord was
extradited. The man who put the pressure on Stroessner had been Henry
Kissinger. According to international spook Luis Gonzalez‑Mata, himself a party
to the affair, the pressure began in late 1968, a year in which one of
Kissinger's friends also happened to be in Paraguay on a "weapons deal."[3]
The man was CIA. agent /double agent Fernand Legros, a close acquaintance of
several members of the Ricord gang.[4]
Roger Delouette
The case of Roger "French Connection" Delouette involved the
greatest international fireworks and was recreated in print and on screen.
On 5 April 1971 a U.S. customs agent discovered eighty‑nine packets of
heroin hidden in a Volkswagen van on board the Atlantic Cognac, a freighter docked in Port Elizabeth, New Jersey.
They contained forty‑five kilos of the white gold. Delouette was arrested that
same day when he came for the car.
Under interrogation Delouette claimed to be working for French intelligence
agency SDECE, and that his journey with the heroin had been ordered by Colonel
Ferrer alias Fournier, de Marenches' righthand man in the SDECE. Furthermore,
he had been instructed to contact SDECE agent Donald McNabb, who was working at
the French consulate in New York.[5] While that was sensational in itself, the
scandal was far greater than press and public could know. What really inflamed
the Americans was that they had agreed with French authorities to cooperate
against narcotics trafficking, and a key link was the supposedly reorganized
and cooperative SDECE. If Delouette's story were true, then the SDECE had not
only broken its agreement, it had also pulled the rug from under Pompidou, and
much of the Americans' preliminary work would have been wasted.
French Defense Minister Michel Debre, under whose auspices the SDECE
operated, officially denounced Delouette's claim as a fabrication. While he
admitted that Delouette had earlier taken on occasional assignments, he was no
longer attached to the SDECE.
The Americans subjected Delouette to two lie detector tests, both of which
he passed with honor. Prosecutor Herbert Stern's request to interrogate
Fournier was then refused. As for the French, their three‑day investigation of
Fournier absolved him of all suspicion.
At this stage Delouette's past
becomes of interest.
He began working for French intelligence in 1946 at age twenty-three. His
first assignment was keeping tabs on a Greek election, under the supervision of
Colonel Roger Barberot. Although their paths appeared to split, the two stuck
together. While Delouette remained with the SDECE, Barberot shuttled about on
various jobs according to the needs of de Gaulle and Foccart. They were
reunited in Algeria, with Delouette an agent and Barberot the leader of the
Black Commandos. They again crossed paths in the Central African Republic,
where Barberot served as French ambassador from 1961 to 1965. When Barberot
became the head of the BDPA after the May 1968 riots, he immediately hired
Delouette, who proceeded to marry his boss's secretary.
In the fall of 1968 Delouette and Barberot went on a mysterious trip to
Cuba, during which Delouette was approached by the SDECE and asked to become
its agent on the island. He agreed and remained an SDECE agent for nearly one
year, after which he and Barberot journeyed once again to Africa.[6] In late
1969 Delouette suddenly contacted the SDECE's Colonel Fournier to demand back
pay and request reinstatement. Both requests were filled.[7]
Following Delouette's arrest in the United States and official refutation
of his statement, Barberot surprisingly told Radio Luxembourg that he believed
the operation to have been led by Paris SDECE figures seeking to do away with
both Delouette and his troublesome past. The Americans evidently believed
Delouette and Barberot more than they did Defense Minister Debre and Colonel
Fournier. For a crime punishable by twenty years imprisonment, Delouette got
off with five.
At the close of 1972 a new chapter was added to the Delouette saga. Claude‑Andre
Pastou of Christian David's Latin American organization was arrested and began
to sing for the CIA and U.S. narcotics agents. Pastou claimed David had ordered
him to New York at the beginning of April 1971. On April 4 he was supposed to
meet Roger Delouette at the Park Sheraton Hotel to discuss Delouette's delivery
of the forty‑five kilos of heroin to Pastou, who would then pass them on to the
wholesalers.[8]
Pastou said he met Delouette as planned and that the two agreed on a
delivery the following evening. When Delouette, with good reason, ad not
appear, Pastou got the jitters and returned to Latin America.[9]
It's also possible that the above‑mentioned forces were aware of the Nixon‑Pompidou narcotics agreement and saw their own financial stakes in jeopardy. They might
have sought to thwart its implementation by splitting the SDECE and its CIA
colleagues.
Finally, Fournier, who was "old school" SDECE, might also have
been running drugs and, therefore, not been keen on carrying through the
policies of his boss de Marenches.
Michel‑Victor Mertz
On 5 July 1971 a Paris court sentenced two men to five years imprisonment
for trafficking in narcotics. They were Michel‑Victor Mertz, fifty‑one, and
Achilles Cecchini, forty‑nine. Considering that since 1960 they had smuggled
some $3 billion (street value) worth of heroin into the U.S.A., their sentences
were mild to say the least. Moreover, their trial would never have taken place
had French authorities not been under intense American pressure in the wake of
Roger Delouette's expose.
Since 1961, in fact, U.S. authorities had known that Mertz and Cecchini
were smuggling large quantities into the country. Several times the U.S. had
asked the French to act, but to no avail. There were very special reasons for
French resistance.
Michel‑Victor Mertz was born in the Mosel region's French community. In
1941 he was drafted into the German army. Two years later he deserted to join
the French resistance. A man who cherished no great love for the Germans, Mertz
soon became an underground legend as "Commandante Baptiste." His
squad became famous for its daring, Mertz himself killing 20 Gestapo agents,
freeing 400 prisoners and escaping 4 times in all from the Axis powers.
In 1945 General de Gaulle awarded him the Legion of Honor, which was soon
joined by a Resistance medal and War Cross. Mertz was a hero. After the war he
entered French intelligence with the rank of captain and was stationed abroad.
In 1960, while in the employ of the SDECE, Mertz began smuggling heroin
from France to the U.S. together with Achilles Cecchini, a Marseille gangster
tied to the Francisci‑Venturi clan. In 1961 the trade was interrupted when
nearly all of France's top gangsters joined de Gaulle's forces in Algeria.
Mertz was among them.
The SDECE sent him on a spy mission to infiltrate the OAS in Algeria. His
mission proved a great success, even though he was mistakenly arrested by his
own side and placed in a detention camp for OAS ringleaders in July 1961. On
July 14 SDECE chiefs were notified that Mertz had important information. He was
brought before Jacques Foccart himself. He informed Foccart that the OAS was
planning to blow up the president's car near Pont‑sur‑Seine, a bridge across
which de Gaulle was driven each day. Mertz was returned to the camp to
determine the exact time of assassination.
At the last moment he succeeded. De Gaulle's car drove over Pont‑sur‑Seine
as usual, but swerved into another lane, just as the bomb exploded in the lane
normally taken. De Gaulle owed Mertz his life. Following the mission, with both
the president and Foccart indebted to him, Mertz returned to the trafficking of
narcotics.
On 12 January 1962 he shipped an automobile to New York loaded with 100
kilos of pure heroin. The procedure he followed was a standard one. A sheet‑metal
worker opened up the chassis, placed the heroin beyond the scrutiny of customs
officials, and then rewelded the plates. The car was sent to the U.S. under a
fictitious name and picked up by a man with a forged passport in that name.
Over the next eight or nine years Mertz and Cecchini operated without
interruption and bagged a huge fortune. Their bankroller, a man of high
standing, remained anonymous.
Through the years, Cecchini, like Mertz, had been of great service to the
Gaullist party, UDR, in the SO du RPF as well as SAC, which explains the
reluctance to prosecute them. Despite his five year sentence, Cecchini was
deemed too ill for imprisonment and remained a free man. Mertz first began
serving time in July 1972, but appears to have been secretly released shortly
thereafter.[10]
Ange Simonpieri
On 13 September 1971 the fifty‑six year old Ange Simonpieri was arrested at
a private clinic in Ajaccio, Corsica, for smuggling large quantities of heroin
into the U.S. between 1960 and 1970. His partner in crime was the Swiss banker
Andre Hirsch.
Simonpieri had worked for both the SDECE and SAC. Like Christian David, he
had been a barbouze in Algeria directly under Pierre Lemarchand. He became so
close to Lemarchand that, as a local SAC leader, he managed the
"physical" part of Lemarchand's 1963 Parliamentary campaign. Because
of his political connections Simonpieri was known in his birthplace Corsica,
and among Marseille gangsters, as "The Untouchable."
On 31 August 1967 the freighter Frederico
C docked in Miami. Customs agent John Wroth spotted a hunchback on his way
down the gangplank. Finding the hunch suspicious, Wroth slapped it and jokingly
asked if it was a burden. The man stiffened and sprang towards a taxi in which
a sunglassed woman was waiting. But the cabby refused to depart and Wroth
nabbed the couple.
The man was the Swiss banker William Lambert and the woman was Josette
Bauer, an escapee from a Swiss prison where she had been serving time for
murdering her rich father. Customs agents discovered twelve kilos of heroin in
Lambert's hunchback and the couple was slapped with seven‑year sentences by a
Miami court. Both claimed to be couriers for a Corsican known to them as
Monsieur Small. They were to have taken the heroin to Boston and handed it to
one Robert Mori of Switzerland. The trail led from Mori to the Swiss banker
Andre Hirsch, but U.S. narks lacked the evidence to nail him.
After this episode, Hirsch and his partner Monsieur Small started the
Panamanian Food and Chemical Company, which exported canned paella to the
U.S.A.—only some of the cans were filled with heroin. Hirsch was finally
trapped in 1969 when U.S. customs agents opened the wrong cans. He was brought
before a Geneva court, but it wasn't until 29 April 1971 that he was sentenced
to six and a half years in prison. On that day his lawyer, the famous Raymond
Nicolet, announced that Monsieur Small was the Corsican Ange Simonpieri.
The court in Geneva had been pestering French police to question Simonpieri
since 1970, but had been told Simonpieri was in a clinic with a bad heart and
could not take the questioning. When Nicolet's assertion hit French newsstands,
Simonpieri was quickly readmitted into the Grandval clinic with severe heart
pains.
But Simonpieri's number was up.
After four months of haggling, on 8 September 1971, with full press coverage,
French Interior Minister Raymond Marcellin ordered court‑appointed doctors to
examine the patient. Five days later police put Simonpieri under arrest. In
July 1972 a French court sentenced him to five years imprisonment—a penalty,
like those of Mertz and Cecchini, that bore no relation to the crime. Hirsch
and Simonpieri each got less time than their hapless couriers, Lambert and
Bauer.
Once again there was the scent of CIA agent Fernand Legros, an acquaintance
of the Hirsch family, who was seen with Madame Hirsch in Geneva after her
husband had been put away.[11]
Andre Labay
On Sunday, 26 September 1971 U.S. customs agents arrested the Frenchman
Richard Berdin on his way out of the Abbey Victoria Hotel on Fifty‑First Street
in New York City. His arrest grew out of the discovery of eighty‑two kilos of
heroin aboard the Italian liner Rafaello
in New York harbor. Though Berdin was a small fish in the drug ring they were
tracking, the customs agents had followed him for five days to several of his
contacts.
In fact the arrest was a slip caused by fierce rivalry between agents of
customs and the BNDD. For half a year the BNDD had been cooperating with French
narks in search of Berdin's bankrollers and New York customers. Much to the
narks' chagrin, customs agents struck without warning their rivals. However,
luck was with customs. Weeks later Berdin, seeking a reduced sentence, fingered
a French all‑star drug ring that included gangsters Laurent Fiocconi, Jo
Signoli, Jean‑Claude Kella, Alexandre Salles, Jean Dumerain, Felix Rosso, Jean
Demeester, Raymond Moulin, Patrick Lorenz, Jacky Martin, Francois Scapula, and
Andre Andreani; plus U.S. mafiosi including Louis Cirillo, Lorenco d'Aloisio,
Frank Rappa, and Giuseppe Ciacomazzo.[12]
Their sentences ranged from five to twenty‑five years, while Berdin got
away with three and served only one and a half. Today he's living in the U.S.A.
with a new name and a new face, but still fearful of underworld revenge.
On 5 October 1971 one Andre Labay visited the Paris BNDD office, said he
was working for the SDECE, and offered to help bring 100 kilos of heroin into
the United States. He would then make another trip with the same quantity and
lead the BNDD to the wholesalers. As the BNDD well knew, Labay was a ringleader
of the gang on which Berdin had stooled. After telling him to return the next
day, they phoned the French narcotics police. On October 6, French police
arrested Labay and three other heroin traffickers, and found 106 kilos of
heroin in Labay's Volkswagen.
Why did Labay show up at the U.S. narcotics office, and what did he really
propose? There has been no lack of answers. Some say Labay was employed on the
same side as Delouette, by forces seeking either to discredit the new SDECE
leadership or to destroy the transAtlantic drug crusade. Others believe the
contrary — that Labay was a CIA‑SDECE double agent made into a scapegoat when
Berdin sang.
Andre Labay had been another of Pierre Lemarchand's barboutes in Algeria.
Not known for his fighting, he was sent to spy behind OAS terrorist lines. In
late 1961 Jacques Foccart sent him to Kinshasa (in the Congo), the Ivory Coast
and Gabon. Back in France he immediately joined SAC as a fund‑raiser.
For reasons unknown Labay began going his own route in the mid‑sixties.
With his close friends, CIA agent Fernand Legros and Thierry de Bonnay, he had
his Ring in the international art trade. He got involved with a Belgian
insurance company that collapsed with $6 million in debts, and, like Legros, he
also produced several movies.
Labay and de Bonnay ran the Parisian hotel at which the Moroccan Colonel
Dlimi stayed in the aftermath of the Ben Barka affair. It was also the hotel
that doubled as a mercenary recruiting station for the Katangese army of Moise
Tshombe, whom the Labay/Legros/de Bonnay threesome helped abduct to Algeria.
And in his Geneva apartment, Labay once hid the Algerian revolutionary,
Belkassem Krim, who was later murdered. [13]
In 1968 Labay went to Haiti, where he made a small fortune from a factory.
He was often visited there by Legros, and the two became personal friends of
the Haitian dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Labay ingratiated
himself with Duvalier's daughter Marie-Denise, leading some to suspect he was
her lover. In Haiti he served as an SDECE‑CIA double agent. He stayed in close
touch with U.S. gangsters Joe Bonnano and Max Intrattor, and one of his Geneva
contacts was the Lansky syndicate's financial brain, John Pullman.[14]
Marcel Boucan
Late in the evening of 29 February 1972 the sixty‑ton shrimpboat Caprice de Temps sailed out of the cozy
harbor of Villefrance on France's Mediterranean coast. The ship was registered
in Guadeloupe. Its skipper was the fifty‑eight‑year‑old former parachutist
Marcel Boucan, a Hemingway type in more ways than one.
Boucan was a charming old soldier. Since the war he had smuggled alcohol
and cigarettes from Tangiers to France, and weapons the other way, first on
board l'Oiseau des Iles and later the
Caprice de Temps. To strangers he was
just another shrimp fisherman. In fact, until 1957 he was the chairman of the
Cagnes fisherman's union, and was also an extraordinarily well‑read and clever
man whose cabin featured the works of Kafka, Balzac, Camus, and Kant. He was
married to a woman from Guadeloupe and in his later years he often sailed
through the French West Indies.
As he was steaming out of Villefrance on 28 February 1972 the customs
cruiser Sirocco was leaving Nice.
Hours later customs agents hailed down the Caprice
de Temps. Boucan ordered full steam ahead, but changed his mind when the Sirocco fired a salvo. Aboard the
shrimpboat the agents found 425 kilos of heroin, the largest single shipment
ever confiscated. The size of the load suggested desperation among smugglers
following the 1971 roundup of several narcotics rings. The heroin had been
destined for Santo Traffiicante, jr.'s Florida‑based Cuban Mob.[15]
Boucan was slapped with a fifteen‑year sentence on 5 January 1973. His
courtroom arrogance and noble coolness irked judges so much, that his appeal
brought three more years. Such severity was unheard of in France. A dozen
Marseilles gangsters were also locked up in the aftermath. They were all from
the same circle of crooks that had participated in the Labay affair, which made
it likely that the men upstairs, who needless to say went untouched, were also
from the same political faction.
The Laboratories
On 27 January 1972 French police stormed a heroin lab in Marseille's
Montolivet quarter. The laboratory, which produced forty kilos of good quality
heroin each week, was run by Marius and Marie-Antoinette Pastore. Marius got
fifteen years on 29 September 1972 while Marie‑Antoinette got five.
On 16 March 1972 the police made an impressive arrest that broke the heart
of many a politician, bankroller, and cop. The catch was heroin's grand old
man, Jo Cesari, reputedly the best heroin chemist in the world.
Born in Bastia, Corsica in 1915, Cesari was first a sailor, then a grocer,
bartender, and farmer. In the early fifties he apprenticed himself to his half‑brother
Dominique Albertini, the manager of several Marseilles heroin labs. In 1962
Cesari purchased a luxurious Aubagne estate, La Roseraie, that included an
enormous mansion, a park, a swimming pool and a tennis court. No one could
figure out where the old sailor had gotten his money.
Cesari would leave his estate for long stretches of time. In 1964 narcotics
police shadowed him for several months, and converged on Clos Saint Antoine, an
abandoned estate where he had set up two heroin labs and put four assistants to
work. Police stormed the estate, arresting Cesari and his staff. They also made
an interesting discovery in one of the back rooms: the nephew of Marcel
Francisci.[16] Months earlier the boy's father, on an unannounced trip back to
Corsica, had discovered his wife with a lover, whom he proceeded to shoot
through the throat before returning to France with his son Jean-Francois.
As head of the family, Marcel Francisci looked after his nephew. He placed
him under the wings of a Cesari laboratory worker and his wife. This is the
same Francisci who denies any involvement with heroin.
Cesari was sentenced to seven years in prison, but was released a lot
sooner. As soon as he was out he returned to the synthesis of his favorite
organic compound, and consulted for several laboratories besides his own. His
1971 production was estimated at twenty kilos of heroin daily, which means
large lots were shipped to the United States. Cesari most probably produced the
huge cargos that, according to narcotics police, reached Miami via Marcel
Boucan and the Caprice de Temps.
In March 1972, as Cesari was setting up a lab in the Suzanne building in
Aubagne, police traced him through an assistant and arrested him. Their prisoner
was a haunched, sickly old figure, ruined by years of acid gas inhalation.
Cesari was only fifty‑eight. On March 22 he hanged himself in his Baumettes
prison cell, overcome, no doubt, by the spectre of a long sentence. He knew
he'd never come out alive.
Cesari left behind letters making it clear he had planned to settle down in
Latin America and experiment with cocaine, most likely in partnership with
Christian David, whose ring survived as one of the larger remnants of the once
great French narcotics empire. Cesari's death was a hard blow to Marseilles'
heroin industry. No one could fill his shoes.[17] French and American police
alike tried in vain to duplicate his process for producing pure heroin.
On 15 July 1972 French narks closed out a series of raids leading to the
closing of three labs, all belonging to the Long brothers.
A few days later President Nixon telegrammed congratulations to Pompidou
for the great strides he had made.
Marseille has never been the
same.
pps. 91-103
Notes
1. The same threesome
turns up in several other circumstances, including Barberot's mysterious trip
to Cuba in 1968. He was joined then by Santenac, Delouette and Gilbert
Beaujolin, a well‑known financier closely tied to Jacques Foccart.
2. P. Chairoff: Dossier B ... comme Barbouzes (Alain Moreau, 1975). 3. L. Gonzalez‑Mata: Cygne (Grasset, 1976).
4. R. Peyrefitte: La Vie Extraordinaire de Fernand Legros (Albin
Michel,
1976).
5. The Newsday Staff: The Heroin Trail (Souvenir Press, 1974).
6. P. Galante and L. Sapin:
The Marseilles Mafia (W.H. Allen,
1979).
7. There is doubt as to
whether Fournier ever knew Delouette was formally readmitted into the SDECE. In
1972 Newsday reporters got hold of a
27 October 1969 letter from Defense Minister Debre to Colonel Barberot in which
Debre, vowing to take care of the matter, asked that Delouette's application
and demand not be discussed with other SDECE leaders.
8. A. Jaubert: Dossier D... comme Drogue (Alain Moreau,
1974).
9. If Pastou's testimony
is correct, then Delouette lied about delivering heroin to an SDECE agent named
McNabb, and there's no truth to Colonel Fournier's alleged involvement. What
remains are one man's word against anothers and several possible explanations.
First, Fournier might not have wanted Delouette back in the SDECE because he
knew him to be Barberot's man and, therefore, tied to forces purged from the
SDECE. Fournier could also have been pressured from above to rehire Delouette,
and then seen the heroin affair as an opportunity to get rid of him.
That seems
rather farfetched, since SDECE narcotics network with the CIA and BNDD was
Pompidou's pet idea. Fournier would hardly have risked his job to get rid of a
single agent. Another possibility is that Barberot, or forces he represents,
welcomed the opportunity to compromise their opposition within the SDECE ‑above
all Fournier and chief‑of‑staff de Marenches. That Fournier later made amends
with the Americans is suggested by his opening a restaurant in New York in
1978.
10. The Newsday Staff,
op. cit.
11. Peyrefitte, op. cit.
12. R. Berdin: Code Name Richard (Dutton, 1974).
13. The exiled Algerian
politician Belkassem Krim was a former leader of the revolutionary movement,
FLN. After Algeria won its independence, he came into conflict with the country's
first chief‑of‑state, Ahmed Ben Bella. Together with the latter's minister of
finance, Mohammed Khider, Krim fled Algeria, while refusing to hand over the
FLN's $20 million war chest to the Algerian regime. Khider had deposited the
money in his own name at Geneva's Banque Commerciale Arabe, and only he and
Krim knew the account number. On 3 January 1967 Khider was shot down in Madrid.
Krim was murdered in a Frankfurt hotel room on 20 October 1970. Both had been
closely connected with Morocco's interior minister Oufkir.
14. E. Gerdan: DossierA ... comme Armes (Alain Moreau, 1974). The Mafia's activities in Cuba
were controlled by Joe Bonnano, whose close partners today in the so‑called
Southern Rim Mafia are Santo Trafficante, jr. and Carlos Marcello. Labay was
also closely tied to Intra‑Bank founder Yussef Beidas.
15. Jaubert, op. cit.
16. L'Express, 14 October 1968.
17.1979 was the year of
the rumor. Not only was Christian David alleged to be back in France, it was
also said that the old French Connection was about to resume the shipment of
heroin from Marseilles to the U.S.A. When the heroin chemist Jacques Masia was
arrested in August 1979, French newspapers went so far as to speculate that he
was a revitalized version of Jo Cesari himself! The latter, it was explained,
had not really committed suicide, but had been "sheepdipped" and used
as an undercover agent by the DEA and French narcotics police (Politiken, 28
August 1979).
-----------------
-----------------
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CAPTURE OF BEAU SERGE IN BRAZIL
Auguste Ricord's March 1971 imprisonment in Paraguay taught Christian David
and Lucien Sarti that it was time to move on. Their choice of location was
Brazil, in particular Ilha Bella, an island off the coast north of Santos,
conveniently only two hours from Sao Paulo and five from Rio de Janeiro. It
also provided a small harbor and landing strip. The two holed up in the
Bordelao, a small hotel run by Haide Arantez and Claudio Rodriguez, friends of
Sarti's Brazilian mistress, Helena Ferreira.
Beau Serge was by then the undisputed boss of "The Brazilian
Connection." Its other leaders were Sarti, Michel Nicoli, Andre Condemine,
Francois Canazzi, Jean Lunardi, Francois Chiappe, Robert Bourdoulous, and
Francois ("Fan Fan") Orsini. Most had known David through SAC. Some
had been with Ricord in Paraguay. Newcomers Orsini and Canazzi were wanted in
France for attempted murder.
Not all the capos lived on Ilha Bella. Some were strategically placed
elsewhere —Chiappe in Buenos Aires, Pastou in Sao Paulo, Sans in Barcelona.
Loosely connected to the permanent core was a long string of collaborators. The
organization was solid. Heroin flowed steadily from Marseille to Ilha Bella
and on to Miami or New York. But Beau Serge ran into a major obstacle: the
Italian Mafia.
Tomasso Buscetta, one of the Sicilians' most notorious thugs, was ordered
to Brazil in 1970 to prepare a takeover of the narcotics traffic-‑a logical
step in a larger plan to be described later. Buscetta was wanted in Italy for
murdering twelve people, including seven policemen, in the Cisculli massacre in
Sicily.[1] He's also alleged to have been responsible for the disappearance of
reporter Mauro de Mauro, who had stuck his nose into the murder of the Italian
oil magnate Enrico Mattei.[2]
Within a year of his arrival in Sao Paulo, Buscetta had his legitimate
cover: 250 taxis, a chain of snack bars, and an aluminum plant. It was all a
front, and when Ricord was put away Buscetta decided the hour had arrived to
move in on the multi‑million dollar dope business. However, he hadn't reckoned
with Beau Serge. Following an extended struggle that ended with David still on
top, Buscetta was forced to play ball like anyone else, and brought with him
into the organization his son Benedetto, Paulo Lilio Gigante, and Guglielmo
Casalini.
Life, though, was not all hard work for David and company. They also found
time for night life in Rio and Sao Paulo, threw lavish parties, and mixed with
film stars, singers and other international celebrities. And still there was
time for politics. David and others took part in the Argentine Anti-communist
Alliance's (AAA) massacres in Argentina, and remained on good footing with the
Brazilian Death Squad. At the same time SAC agents from David's coterie lent
their expertise to the torture chamber of Sergio Fleury, head of Sao Paulo's
infamous Death Squad.[3]
However, like all other good things David's came to an end. For Beau Serge
and his Brazilian Connection, 1972 was a fateful year in more ways than one. It
began with the arrest in January of Sarti and his girl friend Helena on
suspicion of passing counterfeit money. That proved to be only a police calling
card, as the couple was soon back on the streets.
The late‑1971 plugging of French drug smuggling routes had made things
difficult for their U.S. buyers. Aware that Franco-American forces were bent on
crushing the entire French network, New York and Miami Mafia dons treaded
cautiously. Moreover, the arrest of several dealers left the Brazilian
Connection short of customers in early 1972.
In February, shortly before carnival in Rio, David, Sarti, Buscetta and
Nicoli spent three days with Carlo Zippo, a Mafia emissary from New York.[4] At
the meeting, which transpired at Rio's plush Copacabana, Palace hotel, the
mobsters developed a new network and buyer system. Sarti, jittery after his
arrest, would move to Mexico City, the new transit point.
In March Sarti went to Mexico City, where he was joined by his wife Liliane
in an attractive residential district apartment. Sarti had no notion that the
police had been trailing him ever since his entry into Mexico. Somebody had
tipped them off. The Guatemalan authorities were after him for an armed attack
on a bank; he was also wanted by the Bolivian police; and Interpol had issued
descriptions of him everywhere. In the evening of April 17, Sarti and Liliane
left their hideout to go to the movies. Before they got to their car, they were
surrounded by police. Sarti was unarmed, but the police shot and killed him,
and arrested Liliane.[5]
The next day the Mexican Minister of Justice declared that the
international drug trafficker had been killed in a confrontation with the
police. A couple of months later, French newspapers added that Christian David
had been in Mexico City at the time of Sarti's death, but that he had escaped
and made it all the way back to Brazil.[6]
On 7 May 1972 Brazilian police found the body of a young woman washed
ashore on an Ilha Bella beach. It was Haide Arantez, owner of the Bordelao, the
David gang hideout. Examination revealed the cause of death as strangulation.
Another body appeared in the same place the next day. This time it was Haide's
boy friend and partner, Claudio Rodriguez, who'd had his head busted in. The
double‑murder suspect was naturally Beau Serge, who was believed to have knocked
off the hotel owners for disclosing the Mexican locale.
Sarti's mistress Helena Ferriera was jailed for her own safety while
Brazilian police, egged on strongly by U.S. narcotics agents, hunted after the
David gang. Besides entertaining the police with stories of the gang's
escapades, Ms. Ferreira also claimed they met frequently with the French
millionaire/playboy/art dealer Fernand Legros.
Whether because of corruption in Brazilian police ranks or an agreement
involving the CIA and BNDD, David's gang remained at large for the time being,
notwithstanding the police manhunt. If he was to be extradited, they would have
to catch him in the act. David, in the meantime, was ensconced in a Rio villa
where he'd set up his mistress Simone Delamare.
In early October 1972 the CIA and BNDD were finally ready to strike when,
in Rio de Janeiro harbor, they discovered sixty kilos of heroin about to be
shipped by the gang to Miami aboard the freighter Mormac Altair. Police picked
up Michel Nicoli in Sao Paulo, and nabbed most of the other members within
days. On October 17, a large police force was dispatched to Simone Delamare's
house, where David's presence was no longer a secret. But Beau Serge was tipped
off and managed to slip away one more time.
On October 21, two alert
policemen noticed an obviously nervous young woman shopping in Salvador, in the
Brazilian state of Bahia. They followed her to a third class hotel in the
seedier side of town. She looked too well‑dressed and sophisticated to stay at
such a dive, so the two officers brought her in. At headquarters they soon
determined she was David's girl friend Simone.
Shortly thereafter Beau Serge was packing up when six policemen smashed
through the door to his room. He lunged for a pistol, but was grabbed before he
could fire a shot. What followed was a tussle the officers won't forget.
"He was a master of karate," one of them later reported. "He
threw us around like balls. If there had only been four of us, I don't see how
we could have handled him."
Handcuffs and foot chains were needed to restrain Beau Serge. Nor did he
relent as he lay on the floor, battered and exhausted, but rather tried bribing
the Brazilian officers to release him. He offered each $100,000 plus tickets
anywhere for their entire families. Leaving the hotel room, he managed,
handcuffs and all, to grab a drinking glass, smash it and cut deeply into his
wrist. His goal was a hospital where opportunities for escape were numerous.
But his hospital stay was too short. Guards kept close watch as he was sewn up
in an emergency room before being thrown into a cell. By the next day he was in
a prison in Sao Paulo.
In Beau Serge's valise police found one 9 mm Browning, one silenced
Beretta, one short‑barreled Smith and Weson revolver, three cartridges of a
crippling poison, ninety bullet cartridges of various caliber,[7] and a
Uruguayan diplomatic passport in the name of Edouard Davrieux, with a photo of
Christian David.
The arrest was greeted with mixed reactions in France. Worry, anger, and anxiety
were aroused in certain circles, joy in others. At least one person was
delighted: police lieutenant Bellemin‑Noel, who looked forward to finally
settling the score with the murderer of his predecessor Galibert —or so he
thought.
Just how great an effort the French made to have David extradited remains
in doubt. Certainly some wanted him back to stand trial. Others preferred that
he never again have the opportunity to talk. There were representatives of each
persuasion in the highest political echelons. Since international law placed
France in the driver's seat, its efforts at extradition must have been meek at
best. Many were dumbfounded when Brazil extradited Christian David to the
U.S.A. without first notifying the French government.
Before extradition to the
U.S.A., however, David shocked the world by "admitting" his
complicity in the Ben Barka affair. He also cut the artery in his wrist a
second time, and on the day before his transfer to the U.S.A., he got hold of a
light bulb, crushed it, and swallowed the fragments. However, he received no
medical treatment before arriving in the United States. According to his own
later testimony, he was unaware of his destination when U.S. narks came for
him. Presuming it was France, he resisted violently. The Americans, he claimed,
pumped him so full of drugs he didn't know what was happening.
During the trial that began within days of his arrival in Brooklyn,
newspapers reported he had been a victim of torture. David himself said:
"I was tortured by Brazilian police for thirty days and fed nothing for
twenty‑six. They stole all my money. Today I can't afford a lawyer, I haven't a
cent."
David and Michel Nicoli, who, with Claude‑Andre Pastou, had been extradited
to the U. S. before David — each claimed they had been hung head down over a
steam‑puffing pipe as the Brazilians administered electric shocks to their
genitals. While David looked awful in court from his self‑inflicted wounds, not
a trace of the alleged torture could be seen on Nicoli. The story of torture
certainly doesn't fit David's later desire to return to prison in Brazil.
On December 1 the court handed down its sentences. Auguste Ricord,
extradited from Paraguay two months earlier, had gotten twenty‑seven years.
David and Nicoli now got twenty. Pastou, who gave the Americans important
information on the Delouette affair, got seven. Other Frenchmen in David's gang
were extradited back to France, where they were wanted for murder and other
capital crimes. The only one to avoid arrest was Andre Condemine, who went
underground only to be murdered. Francois Chiappe avoided extradition until
1976, when he was sentenced in New York to twenty years. Tomasso Buscetta and
the gang's three other Italians were nabbed on 5 November 1972, nearly two
weeks after David, and were shipped off to Italy.
Fernand Legros, the mystery man in this and earlier intrigues, was
apparently placed under protective confinement in Rio shortly after David's
sentencing in the United States. Officially he was arrested in connection with
art frauds.[8] Each day, though, he was brought lavish meals including lobster,
champagne, cognac, and fat Havana cigars. The big French underworld shakedown
began just as Legros was "imprisoned." If Legros had aided the CIA in
the David affair, he must have been high on the list of those to be taken care
of on the other side of the Atlantic.
In 1974 SAC agents kidnapped Legros in Brazil, flew him back to France and
locked him up.[9] Somebody was interested in the part he had played in certain
affairs. However, Legros' friend Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, came
to his aid. Kissinger demanded his release, protesting sharply the kidnaping of
a U.S. citizen.[10]
Legros still fears for his life. As recently as the spring of 1976 a
nervous Legros, surrounded by bodyguards, said he had been threatened by
Christian David's barbouze colleagues and had demanded police protection.
pps 105-110
Notes
1. The Newsday Staff: The Heroin Trail (Souvenir Press, 1974).
2. J. Sarazin: Dossier M. . . comme Milieu (Alain
Moreau, 1977).
3. P. Chairoff: Dossier B ... comme Barbouzes (Alain Moreau, 1975).
4. Zippo was a member of
the New York Gambino family (Newsday, op. cit.),
which is interesting insofar as the prime customers of the David/ Ricord
organization were Santo Trafficante, jr. and his Cuban Mafia; it is especially
interesting in light of the apparent rift between the so‑called Southern Rim or
Sunbelt Mafia ‑an alliance mainly of Joseph Bonnano, Trafficante and Carlos
Marcello— and the New York families; see D. Moldea: The Hoffa Wars (Charter Books, 1978). Bonnano, 75, and his nephew
Jack DeFillipi, recently went on trial on federal conspiracy charges involving
the laundering of Mafia money.
5. P. Galante and L.
Sapin: The Marseilles Mafia (W.H. Allen,
1979).
6. L'Aurore, 27 July 1972.
7. Le Nouvel Observateur, 13 November 1972.
8. L'Aurore, 31 May 1976.
9. French newspapers
published varying conjectures as to the grounds for Legros' arrest. Most
guessed he had been implicated in narcotics smuggling by association with
David's gang. None supposed Legros might have helped lay a trap for Beau Serge,
and therefore was in jail for his own protection.
10. Legros had become an
American citizen while working for the CIA.
=====
CHAPTER TWELVE:
THE LIQUIDATION
With Christian David behind bars in Illinois' Marion prison, only one
important French narcotics ring remained active, and that was run by the
Francisci‑Venturi mob. Their network consisted of such pillars of the
Marseilles underworld as Paul Mondolini, Jean‑Baptiste Croce, Albert Bistoni
and, until mid‑1972, Etienne Mosca. Intelligent, experienced gangsters who left
nothing to chance, they were considered untouchable. Mondolini, the most highly
respected of all, is considered Marcel Francisci's crown prince.
On 7 July 1972 Mosca was
arrested in Lyons, stunning the entire French underworld. Were the untouchables
really to be hit? But when there was no follow‑up, all sighed in relief.
Lightning struck six months later on 19 January 1973. French narks shadowed
Croce and Bistoni to the Gondolier bar in Marseilles' old harbor quarter. Both
were arrested on the way out of the bar, police having blocked the main road.
Disbelief gave way to suspicion when Bistoni was released shortly thereafter. Had
he talked?
Croce's arrest proved to be the
trigger for a desperate, ruthless gangland war that measured up to prohibition
Chicago. In the first half of 1973, thirty French mobsters were murdered ‑primarily
in Paris, Marseilles, and Lyons.[1[
On March 31, Bistoni was at Marseille's Tanagre restaurant with two of his
strongmen. The door opened and in walked three men, pistols drawn. Seconds
later Bistoni, his thugs and the restauranteur were goners. The killings were
common knowledge by the time police arrived.
Among the many sensational shootouts of early 1973, several were connected
to Christian David.
Police fished a drifting trunk from the
Seine on 28 July 1973. Inside was the corpse of a man with bullets in his heart
and neck. It was Andre Condemine, the David gang's minister of transportation
and its only member to avoid arrest. Police investigation established he had
been dead since February. Perhaps Condemine had had something to do with the
arrest of Jean‑Baptiste Croce. It was no secret that Condemine had sought to
reconstruct a Latin American narcotics network and had settled on Mexico,
Croce's territory.
Among David's other friends who were knocked off in those hectic months,
the first to go was Roger Dadoun. A former member of both Felix Lesca's gang
and the international gunrunning Mob David had joined upon arrival in Latin
America, Dadoun was shot down in the Paris suburb of Neuilly on 13 March 1973.
Dadoun's best friend (and a close one of Beau Serge's as well) was Louis
Nesmoz. He had sheltered Georges Figon during the Ben Barka affair and later
helped the Orsini brothers smuggle heroin via Barcelona to David in Brazil.
Nesmoz avenged Dadoun's death by shooting Joel Arfoiulloux and Raymond Elbaz in
Paris's Clemence bistro on 7 April 1973.
Next it was Nesmoz' own turn to taste lead. On May 19, as he and two of his
men dined at the Gentilly restaurant in Paris, two men entered and shot the
three of them.
Yet another was killed on 15 June 1973. Jean Auge, the Lyons area SAC chief
and crime syndicate boss who had been in touch with Ricord in Paraguay and on
good terms with David, Nesmoz, and Dadoun, was found after a slow and painful
death with eight bullets in his stomach.[2]
While the gangsters were cutting each other down, the police were not
exactly on vacation. On 10 April 1973 the Marseille and Paris forces teamed up
on a major drive that sent thirty mobsters behind bars.
The gang war subsided by mid‑1973, but has never completely ended. With
heroin no longer a viable commodity, there are more pockets than can be filled
by other underworld operations, and so the murders continue at regular
intervals. The 1975 toll included gangland boss William Zemmour, who was given
a royal burial and escorted to his grave by anything able to walk, creep, or
crawl in the Parisian underworld.
Several big names resorted to untraditional means of survival. Francois
Chiappe, the David gang heavy stationed in Argentina, was arrested in Cordoba.
He was imprisoned in 1972, just as the rest of the gang was being nabbed in
Brazil. But Chiappe had excellent connections in right wing Peronist circles. A
former OAS Commando Delta member in Algeria, he had remained in touch with
other OAS figures assembled in the Paladin group, a Fascist terrorist combine
founded in Spain by the Nazi war criminal Colonel Otto Skorzeny.[3] It was
among the organizations to which Juan Peron's grey eminence, Jose Lopez Rega,
allied himself when he formed the dreaded terrorist group, the Argentine
Anticommunist Alliance (AAA).
When the Peronist Hector Campora became president of Argentina in May 1973,
Chiappe was released and immediately recruited into the AAA. When Peron himself
returned a month later from eighteen years of exile in Spain, an enormous crowd
gathered at Ezeiza airport on June 20 to greet him. Among them was a large
contingent of Montoneros and other leftists. Security police were well aware of
their presence. Police and AAA terrorists led by Colonel Jorge Osinde attacked
the demonstrators with machine guns and hand grenades. Some 100 were killed and
300 were badly wounded. The AAA's prisoners were dragged to the airport parking
lot and tortured. Two of the more zealous hatchet men were Chiappe and former
OAS colonel Jean Gardes.[4]
On August 6, Chiappe's wife visited the Argentine prison commissioner on
her husband's behalf, to request that he be placed in protective
confinement.[5] Chiappe had gotten the jitters after the discovery of his
friend Condemine in the Seine. Besides, he was in constant danger of abduction
by the Americans, who had long been demanding his extradition. The prison
commissioner contacted the highest political authorities, and Buenos Aires'
Villa Devote prison soon opened its doors. There Chiappe led the same charmed
life as Auguste Ricord in Paraguay, and Fernand Legros in Brazil. His "cell"
was outfitted with elegant furniture, TV and a radio, and first class food was
brought in from town. Naturally he was "paroled" whenever Lopez Rega
or Isabel Peron threw a party, and the threat of extradition ended when the new
Argentine regime, on orders from Peron, said a final no to the United States.
Instead cooperation between the two countries took a different form.
In May 1974 the U.S. ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert C. Hill, and Lopez Rega —with whom he had worked closely for years — publicly signed an agreement to wage common war against the drug traffickers. At the signatory ceremony, Lopez Rega declared that the drug war would automatically be an anti-guerilla campaign as well, under the rationale that the Montoneros were the real traffickers. Pursuant to the agreement, the U.S. sent to Argentina a large number of narcotics agents trained at the CIA's special school in Georgetown.[6]
In May 1974 the U.S. ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert C. Hill, and Lopez Rega —with whom he had worked closely for years — publicly signed an agreement to wage common war against the drug traffickers. At the signatory ceremony, Lopez Rega declared that the drug war would automatically be an anti-guerilla campaign as well, under the rationale that the Montoneros were the real traffickers. Pursuant to the agreement, the U.S. sent to Argentina a large number of narcotics agents trained at the CIA's special school in Georgetown.[6]
One year later, a report of Argentina military intelligence revealed a
giant narcotics network responsible for smuggling cocaine to the U.S. market.
Its leaders were none other than Lopez Rega; his son‑in‑law Raul Lastiri;
Senator Juan Carlos Cornejo; Robert Romero, managing editor of Argentina's
largest provincial newspaper, El Tribuno;
and Colonels Osinde and Raul Lacabanne, both of whom fled to safety in
Paraguay.[7]
When a military coup deposed Isabel Peron, who had assumed the presidency
on the death of her husband, power was seized by General Jorge Videla, who
professed a strict, albeit selective, morality. He refused to harbor a hardened
criminal like Chiappe in spite of the many leftists he had disposed of. In late
April 1976 Videla extradited Chiappe to the U.S.A. to share the fates of
Ricord, David, Nicoli, and Pastou.[8]
Simultaneously with the 1972‑73 attrition in French underworld ranks,
President Georges Pompidou took the opportunity to purge SAC of its
undesirables. Though it seemed as if SAC was being eliminated altogether, such
was not the case. No angel himself, Pompidou would call on the corps at election
time and whenever else he saw fit. But Pompidou did eliminate those elements
opposed to him personally, who had continued to make trouble for the new
regime. Some 7000 men were weeded out, many of them criminals who had enjoyed
SAC protection and now became easy marks for the police.
Many of the barbouzes booted from SAC fled to Spain to join the Paladin
group, where they learned to work side‑by‑side with their former arch enemies,
the OAS terrorists.
Not all SAC agents were as fortunate. Charles Lascorz, a charter member of
SAC and its chief for southeastern France, was among the many hunted down by
the police. Along with his SAC activities, he had also headed a large smuggling
and swindling mob comprised exclusively of SAC agents, as had his colleague
Jean Auge in Lyons.
Police tracked Lascorz; to a Paris apartment in early 1972 and sent two
officers to fetch him. Just how he did it is not known, but Lascorz managed to
lure them to a cellar and lock the door behind him. He then fled to Spain, taking
the SAC archives with him. But Spanish police arrested him on 23 January 1972
and put him in Carabanchel prison. They extradited him to France two months
later, but not before the Spanish intelligence agency DGS had photocopied the
archives. Lascorz; was sentenced in France to three years in prison a4ong with
eight of his SAC cohorts.
Between mid‑1971 and mid‑1973 the French espionage and underworlds suffered
staggering losses. A succession of untouchables bit the dust, most prominent
among them Joseph Orsini, Jo Cesari, Jo Attia, Georges Boucheseiche, Julien le
Ny, Pierre Dubail, Andre Condemine, Lucien Sarti, Albert Bistoni, Jean Auge,
Louis Nesmoz, and Roger Dadoun. Between forty and fifty gangsters perished in
the French heroin war during that interim, only two of them of natural causes.
In addition, a horde of French heroin smugglers, the entire elite included,
was put behind bars. The big names were Auguste Ricord, Christian David, Michel
Nicoli, Roger Delouette, Andre Labay,[9] JeanBaptiste Croce, Jo Signoli, Ange
Simonpieri, Jean Claude Kella, Jean Orsini, Roch Orsini, Martin Orsini, Laurent
Fiocconi, Etienne Mosca, Marcel Boucan, and Richard Berdin.
A glance at French arrest figures reveals the magnitude of the slaughter of
the French heroin Mafia. Twenty‑five traffickers were arrested in 1969‑70. In
1971 alone the number was 26 and in 1972 it shot up to 108. With the exception
of a lone behind‑the‑scenes bankroller, all were active, professional
smugglers. An even greater number of French traffickers were arrested in 1972
in the U.S. and elsewhere.
More than half the gangsters killed or imprisoned during those two fateful
years were connected to intelligence agencies SDECE and/or SAC. Whether or not
the two organizations had directly profited from heroin trafficking and
actually managed and financed part of it remains a subject of speculation.
 |
| Iron collar around Marseille |
Equally disastrous, Turkey halted its illicit opium production by an
agreement with the U.S. which ensured the Turks compensation. In 1973, of
course, there were stocks of morphine base to be found in Turkey, Lebanon, and
Marseille. However, the frequent seizure of heroin shipments had thinned them
out badly.
In 1970 Marseille supplied roughly
80 percent of the heroin on the U.S. market. Fifteen percent came from Mexico
and only five percent from Southeast Asia. By 1973 the French share had fallen
below 50 percent, and in 1975 it was estimated at less than 15 percent. From
the law enforcement standpoint, the French heroin Mafia was effectively
crushed, and the U.S. narcotics intelligence agency, the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA), considered moving its European headquarters from Paris to
Amsterdam.[12]
The French underworld and its more "respectable" bankrollers were
deprived of an annual income of some $150 million for a quantity of heroin
which when cut in the U.S. could bring a street price of $20 billion.
But did the supply of heroin to the international market really fall by an amount
equal to the French share? Did it fall at all?
Wasn't it true that pure heroin could only be produced in Marseille and
that the world's drug habit would be largely relieved if only one could smash
the French and Turkish suppliers? Isn't that what Nixon told Pompidou?
Yes, but how often did Nixon
tell the truth?
pps. 111-117
Notes
1. Various sources claim
that some of these murders were "liquidations" executed by a special
"assassination squad" set up by the White House and led by a former
CIA agent, Lt. Col. Lucien Conein—see, for example, E.J. Epstein: Agency of Fear (Putnam, 1977); J. Hougan: Spooks
(William Morrow, 1978); and chapter fifteen of this volume.
2. A fifth member of this
circle, Didier Barone, was also involved in heroin trafficking with both Jean
Claude Kella and Christian David. What is especially interesting about Barone
is his connection to Fernand Legros, with whom he was involved in art deals.
3. P. Chairoff: Dossier B ... comme Barbouzes (Alain
Moreau, 1975).
4. Liberation, 19 July 1976.
5. L'Aurore, 31 May 1976.
6. Counterspy, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1976.
7. Latin America Political Report, 19 December 1975. 8. L'Aurore, 31 May 1976.
9. Andre Labay and Jo
Signoli got thirty and twenty years respectively in a Paris court on 7 December
1973.
10. The Long brothers
were sentenced on 11 October 1973. Armand and Marcel each got eighteen years
and Louis got twelve. Another "lab‑owner," Louis Ambrosiono, was
sentenced to twenty on November 30.
11. The Newsday Staff: The Heroin Pail (Souvenir Press, 1974).
12. John Cusack in Drug Enforcement, Spring, 1976. The last two
major trials of Corsicans were held in Marseilles. In July 1974, twenty‑seven
men and two women were sentenced. They were the remnants of the Francisci
empire run by Jean‑Baptiste Croce. Finally on 26 May 1977, eleven men were
sentenced in connection with the Marcel Boucan affair.
A key
figure in the last‑mentioned case was Laurent Fiocconi. With the aid of a
prison chaplain he fled from Manhattan's Federal House of Detention in 1974
together with six other major narcotics traffickers--Ernest Malizia, Enrique
Barrera, Gilbert Fornsztejn, Mario Perna, Nelson Garzia, and Amado Lopez.
Fiocconi was arrested in Bogota, Colombia in 1975 only to escape once more (New York Times, 14 April 1977).
The last of
the Ricord organization to be arrested was Dominique Orsini. In 1975 he was
tracked down in Senegal, Africa by DEA agents and brought back to the U.S. On
12 April 1978 he was found murdered in his isolation cell in the Federal pen in
Atlanta (France Soir, 13 April 1978).
Months earlier his cellmate Vincent Papa had been murdered, as had their
lawyer, Gino Gallina. Like Orsini, Papa had been mixed up in The French
Connection. He was the key to the theft of 398 pounds of heroin from the New
York City Police Department's property room (Boston
Globe, 10 August 1978). Orsini and Papa had allegedly been negotiating with
the FBI via Gallina for reduced sentences in return for information (France Soir, 13 April 1978). Perhaps
the information concerned policemen involved in the theft. Ironically, all
three men were rubbed out shortly before the publication of P. Rosenberg and S.
Grasso's Point Blank (Grosset and
Dunlap, 1978), in which Papa's name has clearly been changed to "Larry
Boston."
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