French Connection (gang)

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The French Connection was a drug smuggling ring that smuggled heroin from Turkey and the Middle East to France and then to the United States or Canada . Here worked Corsican Mafia clans with established Italian-American and Italo Canadian families who helped with the distribution. The operation began in the 1930s, peaked in the 1960s, and eventually ended with the breakup of the organization in the 1970s. The French Connection was responsible for providing most of the heroin then consumed in the United States. The operation was led by Corsican criminals Paul Carbone (and his partner François Spirito ) and Antoine Guérini , and also included Auguste Ricord , Paul Mondoloni and Salvatore Greco . Most of the operation's seed money came from assets Ricord stole during World War II while working for Henri Lafont , one of the leaders of the Carlingue (French Gestapo ) during the German occupation of France in World War II .

history

1930s, 1940s and 1950s

Illegal heroin laboratories linked to the gang were first discovered near Marseille, France, in 1937. These laboratories were headed by the Corsican gang leader Paul Carbone. The Corsican mafia has been involved in the manufacture and trade of heroin, particularly in the United States, for years. This heroin network eventually came to be known as The French Connection.

The Corsican gang was protected by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) after the Second World War in order to prevent the French communists from taking control of the old port of Marseille brought.

First, the raw material for most of the heroin consumed in the United States came from Indochina , then later from Turkey. Turkish farmers were licensed to grow opium poppies for sale to legal pharmaceutical companies, but many sold their surplus to the underworld market, where it was made into heroin and shipped to the United States. The morphine paste was refined in Corsican laboratories in Marseille, one of the busiest ports in the western Mediterranean. The heroin from Marseille was known for its high quality.

Marseille served as the perfect hub for all kinds of illegal goods, including the surplus opium that Turkish farmers grew for profit. The location of the port of Marseille and the frequent arrival of ships from opium producing countries made it easy to smuggle the morphine base into Marseille from the Far or Middle East. The French underground then sent large quantities of heroin from Marseille to New York City .

The first significant seizure after World War II occurred in New York on February 5, 1947, when 3 kg of heroin was seized from a Corsican sailor coming from a ship that had just arrived from France.

It soon became clear that the French underground was not only increasing its involvement in the illicit opium trade, but also increasing its competence and efficiency in the heroin trade. On March 17, 1947, 13 kg of heroin were found on the French liner St. Tropez. On January 7, 1949, more than 22 kg of opium and heroin were confiscated from the French ship Batista.

After the death of Paul Carbone, the Guérini clan was the ruling dynasty of the Unione Corse and had systematically organized the smuggling of opium from Turkey and other countries in the Middle East. At the head of the Guérini clan were the Marseilles mafia boss Antoine Guérini and his brothers Barthelemy, Francois and Pascal.

In October 1957 a meeting between members of the Sicilian Mafia and the American Mafia took place at the Grand Hotel et des Palmes in Palermo to negotiate the international illegal heroin trade within the French Connection.

1960s

A major French Connection case occurred in 1960. In June, an informant told a drug agent in Lebanon that Mauricio Rosal , the Guatemalan ambassador to Belgium , the Netherlands and Luxembourg , was smuggling morphine from Beirut, Lebanon to Marseille. The drug agents had confiscated around 90 kg of heroin in a typical year, but according to intelligence, the Corsican drug dealers smuggled 90 kg of heroin every other week. Rosal alone had used his diplomatic status in one year to transport around 200 kg.

The 1960 Federal Bureau of Narcotics' annual report estimated that between 1,200 and 2,300 kg of heroin were brought from France to the United States annually. The French drug traffickers continued to exploit the demand for their illegal product and in 1969 supplied 80 percent of heroin to the United States.

Because of this increasing amount, heroin became readily available across the United States. In an effort to limit the source, US officials went to Turkey to negotiate phasing out opium production. The Turkish government initially agreed to limit its opium production from the 1968 harvest.

In the late 1960s, after Antoine Guerini's murder of Robert Blemant, a gang war broke out in Marseille, sparked by competition for casino revenues. Blemant's associate, Marcel Francisci, continued the war for the next several years.

In the 1960s, Jean Jehan is said to have been the head of the smugglers' ring.

Broken up in the 1970s

After five consecutive years of concessions, combined with international cooperation, the Turkish government finally agreed in 1971 to a complete ban on Turkish opium cultivation with effect from June 29, 1971. It was during these lengthy negotiations that law enforcement officers took action. One of the most important raids began on January 4, 1972, when agents from the American Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and the French authorities seized 50 kg of heroin at Paris Airport. As a result, drug traffickers Jean-Baptiste Croce and Joseph Mari were arrested in Marseille. One of these French seizures by the French Connection in 1973 resulted in the seizure of 95 kg of heroin valued at $ 38 million.

In February 1972, the French drug traffickers offered a US Army sergeant $ 96,000 (equivalent to $ 586,768 in 2019) to smuggle 109 kg of heroin into the United States. He informed his superior, who in turn informed the BNDD. As a result of the investigation, five men in New York and two in Paris were arrested with 120 kg of heroin with a street value of $ 50 million. Over a period of 14 months, beginning in February 1972, six large illegal heroin laboratories in the suburbs of Marseille were seized and dismantled by the French national drug police in collaboration with American drug agents. On February 29, 1972, the French authorities seized the shrimp cutter Caprice des Temps when it set sail near Marseille for Miami. He was carrying 415 kg of heroin. The number of drug arrests in France skyrocketed from 57 in 1970 to 3,016 in 1972. As part of this investigation, Vincent Papa's crew, including Anthony Loria Senior and Virgil Alessi , was also disbanded . The well-organized gang was responsible for distributing nearly a million dollars worth of heroin on the east coast of the United States in the early 1970s, which in turn sparked a major corruption scandal within the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The scope and depth of this plan are still unknown, but officials suspect it involved corrupt NYPD officials who gave Papa, Alessi, and Loria access to the NYPD's evidence storage room, which contained hundreds of pounds of heroin, the now infamous The arrest of the French Connection had been seized and from which the men served themselves and replaced the missing heroin with flour and cornstarch to avoid detection.

The substitution wasn't discovered until officials discovered that insects were eating all of the bags of "heroin". By then, an estimated $ 70 million street value heroin had already been stolen. The conspiracy was brought to light and there were arrests. Some conspirators were sentenced to prison terms, including Papa, who later in a federal prison in Atlanta ( Georgia was), killed.

Ultimately, the Guérini clan was wiped out as part of gang wars within the French underworld. In 1971, Marcel Francisci was accused by the US Drugs Department of being involved in the heroin trafficking between Marseille and New York City. On January 16, 1982, Marcel Francisci was shot while getting into his car in the parking lot of the building where he lived in Paris.

Known members

The following people and families have been linked to the French Connection:

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The World: The Milieu of the Corsican Godfathers . In: Time . September 4, 1972, ISSN  0040-781X ( time.com [accessed July 11, 2020]).
  2. ^ Alfred W. McCoy, Cathleen B. Reach, and Leonard D. Adams, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (Harper & Row, 1972); Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy (Bobbs-Merrill, 1972); Henrik Krueger, The Great Heroin Coup (South End, 1980); Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control (Atlantic Monthly, 1987). Carlo Cortes, AP, Manila, Oct. 25, 1989.
  3. ↑ Shawcross & Young, Men Of Honor , p. 44-45
  4. ↑ 7 Canadian Gangsters | LISTED | TORO MAGAZINE | What Men Need to Know about Sex, Style, Music, Sports, Drinks & Video. September 14, 2013, accessed July 11, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Ralph Blumenthal: Mobster Makes Offer on French Connection Case . In: The New York Times . February 21, 2009, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 11, 2020]).
  6. ^ Upi: Marcel Francisci Shot Dead; Tied to 'French Connection' . In: The New York Times . January 16, 1982, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 11, 2020]).