-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Great Heroin Coup - Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism 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 --[8]-- EIGHT WITH "'THE OLD MAN" IN PARAGUAY Auguste Ricord and his gang of heroin merchants were riding high when they were joined by Christian David in the latter half of the sixties. Each year they transported hundreds of kilos to the huge U.S. market, and without the noticeable losses that narcotics traffickers must normally contend with. Its street value, depending on competition, lay somewhere between $1 and $2 billion annually. At the end of World War II Ricord fled from France and a death sentence for collaboration with the Gestapo. He wandered for several years in search of an underworld niche. By the end of the second year three of his companions in exile had been murdered. In 1947 Ricord arrived in Buenos Aires with the name Lucien Dargelles. Some say he had with him the millions he'd pocketed during the war, others say he had to start all over. What's certain is that he opened an exclusive restaurant in Argentina at the close of the fifties and soon had a chain of restaurants and motels throughout Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, each with the name "Paris-Nice" and an Eiffel Tower prominently out front. The motels evolved into a high-class brothel chain, and Ricord quietly began trafficking in narcotics.[1] At the start of the sixties Ricord moved his headquarters from Buenos Aires to Asuncion, Paraguay. There he could feel at home among the old Nazi luminaries, who had found safe haven under President Alfredo Stroessner. Ricord also regained contact with an old acquaintance then residing in neighboring Bolivia, former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, the "Killer of Lyons."[2] Ricord had much in common with Barbie, alias Klaus Altmann, inasmuch as the former had assisted the Gestapo at torture and the rounding up of French jews. Since the disclosure of Barbie's whereabouts, French and German authorities alike have vainly sought his extradition for the murder of hundreds. In 1966 Old Man Ricord enlarged his already immense narcotics network upon discovering how easily he could smuggle heroin into the U.S. via Latin America. For some reason, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) largely overlooked the danger from the south until the seventies. It eventually grew wiser, estimating that 50-60 percent of the Marseilles-produced heroin on the U.S. market entered via Latin America, which generally meant by way of Ricord and company. The old man surrounded himself with hard-core thugs. By 1970 the Mob's leaders were Ricord, sentenced to death in absentia for treason, torture and murder; Lucien Sarti, wanted for the murder of a Belgian policeman; Christian David, sentenced to death in absentia; Andre Condemine, wanted for the murder of a policeman; Jean Lunardi, wanted for murder; Francois Chiappe, wanted for two murders; and French gangster and former SAC agent, Michel Nicoli. They also had a network of henchmen encompassing nearly every metropolis in Latin America. The money poured in, some of it to be reinvested in restaurants and night clubs in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, and Caracas. But Ricord lost his grip on the reins. Before long David, Condemine and Sarti took over, reducing the old man to a figurehead who drank foaming Munchnerbrau with "Die Alte Kamaraden" in one of Asuncion's many German bars. Marseilles heroin was transported to Paraguay from embarkation points in Barcelona, Lisbon, and Brussels. In charge of transportation were Condemine, as well as Chiappe, who often travelled between his Buenos Aires base and Barcelona, where his suppliers were the Orsini brothers of the Corsican mafia. The heroin was transported by air and by sea. Part of it went via Brazil, then either overland to Paraguay or directly to the U.S.A. Some of it sailed up the Parana River to Asuncion. The greater part of the heroin sent north arrived aboard small planes known as MauMaus, which generally refueled in Panama before flying on to either Florida or Mexico. There they were unloaded and shipment was continued overland. Paraguay had long been one of the great smuggling centers of the world. With 200 private landing strips scattered among the haciendas, it was impossible to monitor the enormous number of private flights. And no one seriously bothered to try, since numerous government officials pocketed shares of the take. According to Jack Anderson, Ricord's accomplices included some of Paraguay's highest-ranking officers: Pastor Coronel, the intelligence chief; General Andres Rodriguez, leader of an elite 3000-man force especially trained by the Americans; and General Vincente Quinonez, the Air Force chief-of-staff, who was responsible for Asuncion airport and other landing fields.[3] Soldiers from an elite corps, according to Anderson, were stationed to guard the contraband stores for Ricord and other big-time smugglers. Worse still, in the wake of Anderson's sensational revelations came rumors that Paraguayan Air Force officers had even flown Ricord's heroin to the, United States in military aircraft. Unlike Ricord, David didn't simply rake in the money. He thrived on danger. According to U.S. narks, in at least three instances Beau Serge himself transported large quantities of heroin into the United States, using the pseudonym "Jean-Pierre," by which he was known exclusively among friends in the Ricord Mob. David also maintained the organization's good relations with police and spooks in Latin America. He took on assignments for Argentina's terrorist organization, the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA), and probably did the same for Brazil's notorious Death Squad. Grupo Frances, as Ricord's network was known in Latin America, had found a prize in Christian David because of his connections to SAC and French intelligence. Through him there grew new branches in the narcotics network, including one centered about the Felix Lesca gang and the Lyons SAC chief Jean Auge, and another about Jo Attia's gang, SAC leader Ange Simonpieri, and the Swiss banker Andre Hirsch.[4] pps. 82-86 --[Notes]-- 1. As early as 1947 Ricord is alleged to have made contact with America's future narcotics king, Santo Trafficante, jr., who was then running several Havana casinos for the Mafia. Ricord alias Dargelles reportedly headed that year to Cuba, where he sat in on a meeting with, among other notables, Ralph (brother of Al) Capone, Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Trafficante and Lucky Luciano; see V. Alexandrov: La Mafia des SS (Stock, 1978). 2. A Jaubert: Dossier D ... come Drogue (Alain Moreau, 1974). As of 1974, Barbie was the president of the state shipbuilding monopoly, Transmaritima Bolivia (Der Spiegel, 3 June 1974). Bolivia has few ships and no harbor, but had been negotiating with General Augusto Pinochet's Chile for a corridor to the Pacific, until recently when diplomatic relations between the two nations were severed. However, Bolivia's quest has the backing of the UN's Third World Group of 77, the non-aligned nations, and the Organization of American States; see E.Z. Gibson, New York Times, 28 October 1979. 3. Washington Post, 24 May 1972. 4. At the start of the seventies Lesca built up a large inter-European gangster network known as Eurogang and headquartered in Frankfurt, West Germany. Members of the gang were rounded up by West German police in 1975, but Lesca himself moved the operation to Tessin (Der Spiegel, 11 August 1975; see also Jaubert, op. cit.). --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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