Auguste Joseph Ricord

Auguste Joseph Ricord, nicknamed Il Commandante, (died 1985) was a French-Corsican heroin trafficker, convicted Nazi collaborator, and one of the founding members of the French Connection, a mafiosi-type organisation involved in heroin trade, based in France in the 1950s and 1960s.

An agent of Henri Lafont, a member of the Carlingue (French auxiliaries of the Gestapo), under the Vichy regime, he used part of the funds stolen by the Carlingue during the war to create drug laboratories near Marseille. Heroin was refined there before being exported to the US.

On April 19, 1968, Ricord was arrested along with fellow Corsicans Lucien Sarti and Francois Chiappe for questioning regarding the robbery of a branch of the National Bank of Argentina. The three were released due to lack of evidence.

Auguste Ricord was arrested in 1972 in Asuncion, Paraguay. Corsican influence was believed to have been behind the U.S.'s difficulties in extraditing him. He was eventually extradited to the US, sentenced to 22 years in prison and spent 10 years in jail until pardoned. Ricord returned to Paraguay in 1983 and died of illness two years later.

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