The Underworld Podcast - How a Nazi French Mobster Made Paraguay a Smugglers’ Paradise

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

The French Connection and Paraguay In 1968, a gang of smartly-dressed gangsters robbed a bank in Buenos Aires. The fallout from the raid would lead authorities in all kinds of crazy directions — from French paramilitary hitmen to mobsters belonging to the feared Union Corse, Corsican dope traffickers who’d perfected “French Connection” routes from Southeast Asia and Turkey into Marseille, then onto New York to feed a ballooning American addiction crisis. Amid the chaos, one Frenchman fled Argentina to neighboring Paraguay. There he discovered a smuggler’s paradise, full of Nazis and narcos, whose reliance on drugs and contraband would grow so huge that US drug squads would refer not only to the French Connection, but to one named for Paraguay’s repressive, half-German dictator: The Stroessner Connection. He and the fugitive French mafioso would form a bond that, in many ways, has outlived both of them to today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. It's around 7 a.m. on April 19, 1968, in Buenos Aires' bustling Buedo neighborhood. Staff at the local Banco Nacional, a pretty colonated building on one of the Barrio's main intersections, are ready in the branch for business. But this will be no ordinary day. Approaching the bank is a group of four young men, two in impeccable grey suits, two in workers' overalls.

They gather beside a door, its lock has been broken in advance. Then three of the men slip inside, while the fall stays on the street as a lookout. The two overall men announced they're on site to fix some faulty typewriters, but their suited pal pulls out a submachine gun and points it at the staff. He motions them down a stairway into the bank's basement and commands the pair in the overalls, in perfectly accented French, to get to work, which they do, working their way slowly into the bank's fault by cracking three separate codes. Several hours later, the three men emerged with 63 million pesos, almost two million US dollars in today's money. Nobody touches the cashiers,

nobody raises their voice, and nobody gets hurt. The police are bamboozled. It's the biggest robbery in Argentine history, but it's also the slickest, cleanest heist they've ever seen. If witnesses heard the robbers say anything, which wasn't a lot, it was in French. Surely, the cops think, the gang had an insider. A couple days later, that theory gained traction

when one of the bank's watchman takes his own life. It was he, cops believe, who tipped the robbers off to that broken lock. Authorities have also noticed how much the Banquemason heist resembles a rash of recent break-ins across Europe, carried out to finance the activities with something called the Secret Army Organization, or OAS, French far-right paramilitaries most famous for their failed attempt to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle. Among the OAS's numbers are a handful of French Corsican mobsters, men who collaborated with the Gestapo during the war, then grown wildly rich smuggling heroin

from Asia to the United States via the port city of Marseille. This so-called French connection, soon to be immortalized in a Hollywood movie of the same name, has been tracked by cops and Nazi hunters to the extent that by the time of the 1968 heist, many of them are living in Buenos Aires. Under false names, not far from German war criminals,

Argentine state had welcomed after 1945. The OAS even have their own meeting spot. It's a fancy restaurant, right in the middle of the city, French of course, and not altogether coincidentally a 10-minute car ride from the Bancolle-Nacion. A week after the robbery, cops make two arrests. One is a Corsican mafioso known for drugs and weapons smuggling throughout Latin America. The other is a French narco believed by some. Yes, this is true to have shocked JFK from the grassy knoll. But the third man, the most notorious of them all, he gets away. His name is Auguste Record, a tall 57-year-old French Corsican

with a slender frame and white bushy sideburns that go all the way down to his neck. He's a pimp, a drug trafficker, and a fugitive war. criminal, and he's got so many of Buenos Aires's cops in his pocket that they fear his arrest will implicate them. So the corrupt cops reach out to record. Leave Argentina now, they tell him, we can't protect you anymore. Record knows right away where he's got to go, the place he'll be safest, where an iron-fisted half-German has kept his people in a vice-like grip for decades, dispatching enemies to torture chambers and vast rural concentration camps. A country that has welcomed so many Nazis and narcos that is considered by some to be the

most lawless place on the planet. Oh, and also a place where, for the past year, Augusta Record has been running a pizza restaurant, a front, of course, in case he needed to cut his time in Argentina short with the Frenchest of French exits. That moment is now. And record is head of course for neighbour in Paraguay. But the drama is only just beginning. Before long, the fallout from the Banqu-Nassion bust will spill into an episode that leaves records new home on the brink of disaster and a showdown with Uncle Sam.

Welcome to the Underworld podcast. Hello and welcome to the weekly podcast that dives into the weird and the weirder of global organized crime. I am Sean Williams, a freelance writer and porter based in Buenos Aires, and I am joined today by my co-host, Danny Gold, fellow media sufferer in New York City. We are not two guys sitting in their basements reading Wikipedia. This is actually on the second floor of building, which is pretty impressive. We have been out in the field following this stuff for a long time, a bit too long, actually.

I wrote this episode, in fact, from Assumseon, Paraguay, where I was for almost a week, hunting stories digging through the National Archives. Yeah, I don't have a basement, so that's really not, it's not possible for me. in my near city apartment. But what else did you get up to over there in South America, away from the family and the kid, John Williams? A little flashback to the old Berlin days? No.

It was mostly watching football matches and sitting in archives, reading stuff about German people in Paraguay, and yeah, they're exactly who you'd expect them to be. Yeah, it's a pretty weird place. Assuncione is one of the weirdest places I've ever been. It's interesting. But I wouldn't put it top of my holiday list in case you're thinking about backpacking around Latin America anytime soon.

Yeah. Yeah, I had fittingly a very interesting conversation with American Holocaust denier while there as well. Yeah, I mean, those guys are a dime a dozen these days. So it'd be rare if you didn't run into one. Yeah, he was friends with a German guy in a strange little bar. Anyway, I don't need to go into that. It was an annoying conversation, let's say. Anyway, a quick reminder, first up, to subscribe.

wherever you listen to this show and follow us on all the socials, Insta, Facebook, TikTok. Are there others? I'm too old these days. And reach out, the underworld podcast at gmail.com. Any more for any more? Yeah, Patreon.com, sets on a world podcast for bonuses and to support us or sign up on podcast.

com for t-shirts, merch, all other things. And if you want to advertise with us. Yeah, yeah, do it. Okay, let's get into this one. This episode should be pretty clear. from the cold open you just heard, it is absolutely bananas. The country itself is bananas. We've got Nazi collaborators, bank robbing gangs, paramilitaries trying to off child a gall, the North Korea of Latin America, that's my words, not anyone else's, of course, and heaps and

of heaps of high-grade heroin. It is the story of how a dictator and a drug ping-pin hit it off. But it's also about the foundation of drug routes that are still alive and kicking today, causing political incidents all the way up to today, in fact. So let's begin with what the French Connection is. It's something that we've mentioned a bunch on the show before, but we've never really kind of dug all the way into it. You might know it from this old doozy. The French Connection, a millionaire exporter with a record too clean to be true,

and Doyle knows it. But he's been known to make mistakes. Your hutchers are backfired before, Doyle. This time, he can't afford to be wrong. I know the deal hasn't gone down. I know it hasn't. I can feel it. I'm dead certain. Last time you're dead certain, we're not the dead cop. Such a great movie, maybe the best chase scene of all time. That film won five Oscars in 1972 and is based in part on the life of August Record. That life begins in 1911, in the

city of Marseille, one of the biggest ports in Europe and the dominant one on the Mediterranean Sea. Record sets out on his life of crime at the tender age of 16. Copping a conviction for extortion, and then he's convicted at least four more times for armed robbery, receiving stolen goods, and illegal possession of a firearm. Sometime after that, Ricord moves to Paris, where he works as a pimp. In 1940, the German army just takes six weeks to sweep aside its French counterparts, of course, and it establishes a Nazi puppet state in southern France, which includes Marseille, and is named for its adopted capital, the small town of Vichy.

Now, Rickald, he doesn't much mind the Nazis. In fact, he likes him quite a lot. So in 1941, when a friend introduces him to the head of the French Gestapo, Henri Lafant, Lafant sees potential in Recorder's this venal, opportunistic thug, and he brings him into Paris's sleazy underbelly, running brothels and cabarets, selling women or black market goods, or forming possees to go around town, smashing up Jewish properties. In 1942, cops' arrest recalled after a burglary, but the Gestapo spring him from jail. The following year, recalls stills several hundred thousand dollars from a village around an hour outside Paris. Cops know he did this one too, but they'll never get their hands on him.

For one, recalls beloved Nazis have lost the war, and the leading architects of the Holocaust are either being hunted down or put on trial. Wait, wait, hold on. You just went from like 1942-43 to post-World War II. What did we what do we just miss? Yeah, uh, yeah, quite a lot. Um, I guess this is towards the tail end of the, of the occupation. And so he's running around being a pim and a kind of like all round horrible guy. Uh, but in 1945, when the Germans lose the war, he's kind of lost his best protection. Uh, and he, well, he joins the growing list of incredibly bad people who are beginning to think about getting out of Europe as the allies of sweeper.

across the continent, via the so-called rat lines, right? So that's escaping via boat to fascist-friendly South American nations, oftentimes on false passports created by the Catholic Church, on occasion with the explicit backing of the Vatican itself. I'm saying this in a Buenos Aires studio, so I don't know what the guy, can he? It's a pretty shameful episode in the church's history, but I'm sure they're going to clean up their act after this. I can't imagine they're going to, I don't know, get implicated in widespread pedophilia and sexual abuse.

after all this happens. Anyway, yeah, there you go. Some of the most notorious war criminals do make it across the Atlantic on these rat lines. Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Mengeler,

Klaus Barby, who we've done a two-parter on, Ante Pavlich. Most of them end up in Buenos Aires, where I am currently. In fact, a ton of them move into homes in the same Barrio,

which is an upscale, leafy suburb named Florida, where many of their neighbors are actually Jewish. There are some wild accounts of life and BA from this time where you'd have folks who escaped the Holocaust living just a couple of blocks down from the folks who masterminded it. You're really becoming the world's foremost podcaster on the Nazi to South America gangster pipeline, you know? Yeah, well, I'm kind of half hoping that someone's going to like pay me to make a book just by listening to my podcast and not by me having to write a sample chapter, which seems incredibly boring.

These are sample chapters, folks. These are sample chapters. Exactly. Remember August records Gestapo Pao Henri Lefonte from those Paris days? Well, he's captured and executed by firing squad just before the end of the war. So that's a happy story. But record, he gets out. Some say he gets on a boat in Spain, others say Italy. But according to him, he arrives in BA in 1947 with a false passport in the name of Lucien D'Agels or Dijels. There are other rumours that he's taken a ton of jewelry and other treasure looted from French

Jews. So yeah, yet more evidence. This is a very lovely guy that we're talking about right now. Record actually has a deaf sentence hanging over him by this point for colluding with the Nazis, plus a 20-year sentence for that village robbery done back in 1943. But the French can't get to him because the Argentine government of Juan Perron rejects all of France's extradition requests, as he does with a load of other bad guys. And so August Record, gangster, extortionist, pimp and convicted war criminal, starts his second life. in the Western Hemisphere. So now we're into 1947, August record is in Buenos Aires,

and the rat lines have spat a bunch of Nazis and narcos all over Latin America. You've got Klaus Barbie setting up as a drug trafficking paramilitary in Bolivia, Nazi counterfeiter Friedrich Schendt laundering cartel cash in Lima. I'll be going there next week to do a bit more on that. Paul Schaefer setting up Colonia Dignidad in Chile. I remember watching that documentary on Netflix. It's really good worth of watch. But Buenos Aires is really the ground zero for these guys.

It's BA's ports where most of them rock up after the war. And like I mentioned, most of them live in fancy homes in this suburb of Florida. By this time, the French connection is a well-established route for heroin. It had begun back in the 1930s when two Corsican gangsters were looking for a way to hook up the opium producers of Turkey and Lebanon with the booming consumer market in the US. They'd ship morphine base into Marseilles, they'd get French chemists to turn it into smack, and then they'd smuggle it back through the port of Marseilles and out across the Atlantic. I think we went into some serious detail about this in our Turkish heroin kingpin episodes, right? Or the Afghan heroin episodes.

But I can't remember anything too directly because my brain is riddled with the holes. Yeah, that feels like my life from day to day at the moment. Anyway, here is some info about the French connection. from none other than the DEA. Quote, Marseille is one of the busiest ports in the Mediterranean, making it the perfect place to smuggle morphine base from the Middle Eastern Asia in and heroin out.

Morphine base was extracted from opium from Turkish poppy fields. Turkish farmers were licensed to grow opium poppies for sale to legal drug companies, but many sold their access to the underworld market. After arriving in France, it was refined into heroin and concealed laboratories. These labs were crude, but high, highly portable facilities that could be set up in only a few rooms of a small villa.

The heroin was then clively hidden in false bottom suitcases, ships cargo holds are inside the panels of large American cars, and dispatched to the illegal US market. Yeah, that does it. That does the job right there. But you should go back and listen to those episodes. They're pretty deep on the subject. Yeah, listen to my...

Fantastic, if I do say so myself. Yeah, yeah. They are the best we've ever done. Authorities first discover these Marseilles heroin labs in 1937, but they don't exactly shut the French connection down. For one, French officials appreciate the fact that the Corsican Union, as it is officially known, had worked closely with the French resistance during the war, murdering Nazis and helping the underground ship weapons and other supplies through Marseille.

Wait, that's a timeline thing again, right? You're saying they discovered them in 37, but don't shut them down because they later helped the French resistance take out Nazis. Like why, why didn't they shut, I guess in 37. You know, they probably had bigger problems in like 37 and a couple of heroin labs, you know? Yeah, I think we're going to learn like they're really, really canny at getting in with the people in power. And they were doing that at the start, which is the theory as to why they weren't shut down. And then when the war started, especially in southern France, they were like, okay, well, we're going to do a quick pro quo now. And we're going to keep on shipping our stuff.

but we can help you against the Germans, which of course the French do a really great job of doing. When the war ends, Paris then uses these Corsican mafiosi to break strikes by trade unionists, going so far as to assassinate union leaders. They've got French cops, the mayor of Marseilles, and even it's rumoured President Charles de Gaulle on their side. And that's just on their home turf. Post-war, the French connection establishes close ties with opium-producing French coles French colonies in Indochina, that's Vietnam, Lao. They're founding charter airlines to get product from the poppy fields of central Lao to Saigon, something which will later be known unimpeachably

as air opium. They also have plenty of friends in America. Here's Owen Grillo in a great crash-out media piece he did from Marseille last year. Quote, the CIA used the mobsters to break communist strikes in the fragile years after World War II when it was scared Europe would turn red. It thus bolstered the same network of gangsters and their political protectors that would help create the American smack habit. CIA official Tom Braden admitted the links to the Marseilles Underworld in a strikingly candid 1967 editorial entitled, I'm glad the CIA is immoral. Immoral is in inverted commas, but yeah, it's pretty a great title. Braden was hitting back against criticism in the era,

and he described how the agency was effective in fighting communism, funding money to break up a dock strike in Marseille in 1950. He even identifies the exact paperwork from one payment of $15,000 that he gave to Irvin Brown, a US Labour leader and CIA operative for strike breaking in Europe. It's pretty crazy, and Braden goes on, he, i. Brown, needed it to pay off his strong-arm squads in Mediterranean pools so that American supplies could be unloaded against the opposition of communist dock workers. Were the undercover payments by the CIA immoral? surely it cannot be immoral to make sure your country's suppliers intended for delivery to friends are not burned, stolen or dumped in the sea.

So Corsica, by the way, in case you don't know, this is an island next to Sardinia, which is Italian, between France and Italy in the middle of the Med. This is a rugged place, it's largely rural, very poor, kind of similar history to Sicily, right? Folks there claim that drug trafficking is one of the few ways to make a buck. It's also a perfect industry for the men of the core. Corsican Union, who are from this tight, often family-based clan, cadre, with their own culture and their own language. They're a tough bunch, and they stick to a strict criminal code. When the mafioso is spilling his guts, one US spy tells Time magazine, the Corsican is silent, refusing even to give you his name.

Officials around this time, like the late 50s, they believe there are almost 40 separate Corsican clans, most of them operating in U.S. cities, but their identity is so. such a close-held secret that merely speaking their name is enough to get you killed. So Corsican gangsters obviously keep very, very stum. Case in point? In the early 60s, NYPD cops arrest a Corsican gangster named Antoine Riniere with a quarter of a million dollars in what they believe is heroin money. Riniere refuses to give his real name or any explanation for the cash. A judge sends Riniere to prison for six months of contempt of court, but Riniere has the last laugh.

When his term is up, the US deports him to France, but it's never able to prove that his cash was dirty, so he gets it back, get this, with interest. Pretty baller stuff. Of course, not all Gorsican gangsters have been on the right side of history. Take our protagonist, August record, of course, who's cozying up to the Gestapo in Paris, then fleeing to Peronist Argentina, doesn't seem to put any of his fellow Corsicans off, though, from getting him on the newest part of the French connection. That is to spread their influence throughout Latin America and get heroin into United States via the ports of Santos in Brazil or Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires. Record, now working under his fake name, opens a restaurant near Buenos Aires's Estadio Monumental, home to one of its most famous football clubs. Danny, what's that? Boca Juniors.

Is that the only one I know in Argentina? Incorrect, but I'm impressed that you can. What's the answer? It's a river plate. They're up in the north. What are the other ones besides Boca Juniors? June. Give me like two more. Two more.

So I have that knowledge. Independente, Rassing Club. That people know. Yeah, I don't know. I could just like, I should ask the guy in the studio. I mean, I don't. Yeah, don't worry about it. That's too much thought.

Hurtakhan. This place, though, the one near the Estadio Monumental, is going to serve as the front for records second chapter. He hooks up with other Marseille mobsters and he gets stuck right back into the sex trade, trafficking women into Buenos Aires and then dispatching them to high-end brothels. in the city itself, also in the Uruguayan capital city in Montevideo, and Assumcione in Paraguay. This, of course, is a great way to win favor with politicians and police or simply to honeytrapment. At first, I didn't think it was real.

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us but it's records increasing pull towards asuncione that i want to focus on today now i just spend the best part of a week in the city and i can tell you firsthand you want to disappear from the world go to Ascuncione. In fact, that should basically be its tourists. Come to Ascuncion, run away from your problems. I mean, literally the only other English-speaking guy I met was a self-confessed, alcoholic conspiracy theorist from Austin, Texas. And there were all the Germans knocking about there, too.

Incredibly strange place. Downtown Ascuncun, the Spanish Colonial Center. I mean, it might have looked pretty one day, but it's falling into complete disrepair. It's like almost steampunkish. Smoke blasted, covered in wood. weeds, piles of unpicked trash. Anybody there seems to be coming in or going out. Nobody seems to be there unless they're drinking or eating vast slabs of pounded chicken schnitzel, which is one of local delicacies that I ate far too much. On weekends, it feels like the city's human inhabitants have been scooped up and thrown out like the flesh of a rotten Kiwi. Jesus, man, settled down. I know, I'm trying to do my board.

Like the flesh of a rotten kiwi. Yeah, yeah. Please write comments if you like that part and didn't like Danny's introduction. I like it. I like it. It's a little over the top. I'm just saying. I like it. I think it's great. I think you're great. Thank you. I love to have a good time. This is a low place, right? It's round around the swampy bend of the Padua River that marks much of the border with Argentina. And it's low. It's wet, quaggy, full of flies, mosquitoes. And it is always, and I mean like, breath-robbingly hot. Come to the Ciudabriko on a Sunday afternoon and you will see more cats than. people. How's the nightlife? I'm going to, I'm going to conservatively say it is five out of ten, which is, which is a shame. Anyway, yeah, I'll, I'll end my little Anthony Bourdain moment. Here's a, here's a better version of that, right? It's by the British filmmaker Alan Wicker, I guess for younger listeners, he's like the proto through. And he made a film about Asuncione

back at the time August record was hanging out there. Let's hear what he had to say about it. This 400-year-o capital has never charmed travellers. A century ago, Richard Burton wrote, the streets are wretched. Every third building from chapel to theatre is unfinished. Over the whole affair there's a thin varnish of civilization, but the pretensions are simply skin-deep. Drainage has not been dreamed of. Paraguayans still haven't dreamed of dreams. When the rains come, pregnant buses plow along like bloated gondolas. The foreign office regards Paraguay as a hardship post, and our employees, Ambassador enjoys two weeks extra leave. All transport has an old world charm. The railway,

built more than a century ago, has changed little and the locomotus are collector's item. The only connection with the outer world? 938 miles of track down to Buenos Aires. And three quarters of that's inside Argentina. If you don't know Alan Wicker, I strongly suggest you watch his stuff. It's all, all of it is on YouTube. It's outrageous. He's like slick-haired, suited and booted brisd going around the world, just tying it stuff. There's another episode from the same series where he visits Haiti to interview Papa Dr. Duvalia.

Actually, let's hear this bit because it's amazing. This little nugget is right, like literally the next moment after we said our poor and destitute, everyone is. But at the same time, there is always a latent fear of the police. There is always.

What about one here, for example, the telephone tapping is widespread? Yes, well known. Many people know that there. their telephones are tapped. And sometimes you can even get the tapes from the police if you pay for them. For instance, if you want to follow someone, you know, a friend or your wife or something like that, and then you can get your own telephone tapped and then pay for the tapes.

Can't say anything these days, can you? Anyway, back to Monsieur Record, who doesn't even rock up in central a sort of, He opens a pizza joint called Pari Nice in a sleepy suburb miles from downtown that is right on the banks of the Patagauai River and therefore also on the Argentine border. It's very useful if you're, I don't know, orchestrating the shipments of industrial quantities of heroin for the Corsican Union. Record doesn't spend all his time in Asuncione in the 50s and 60s. He darts between there and Buenos Aires. In B.A, he can bring together members of the Corsican underworld at his restaurant by the stadium. But in Assuncione, he can operate almost entirely off-grid.

And throughout the 1960s, heroin shipments through Paraguay explode. And the reason why is the country itself. So let me just tell you the story of what might be the world's most bananas bonkers country. Right, here we go, a bit of history for you. Paraguay decays independence from Spain in 1813, but doesn't become a full-blown nation until 1842. This strange kind of country, not a country, states, will actually prove quite fitting because Little Paraguay, which is around the size of California, but sandwich between Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia. It spends most of the next century and a half not really existing as a nation in the

sense that we might understand it. For one, it's geographically split in half between the southern swampy lowlands that I mentioned, Asuncion sitting in, and this vast, scrubby forest in the north, which spills into the neighboring states called the Chakle. The Chaco is largely populated by the indigenous Guarani people and their language, which is also called Guarani, which is spoken alongside Spanish throughout the nation. Like, it still is today. Like most people are bilingual. But all kinds of bizarre foreign settlers have come to Paraguay since the 1800s, and they still live there today. Friedrich Nietzsche's sister, for example, set up a German, openly Nazi town called Nueva Hermania.

But Paraguay also has a Nueva Londres, a Nueva Italia, and the Neuiland colony. This is really weird. It's home to Platt-Deuts-speaking Russian Mennonite families who fled the Soviet Union. Just a whole bunch of weirdo-white setup shop. Yeah, it's like, it's the bucket of whites. It's really, it's weird. Even by the time August record sets up his drug smuggling pizza parlor, Paraguay has never known democracy. Its early years are dominated by a collection of military strongmen who are, by any measure, complete buffoons. You know, it's interesting. There was a pizza connection after the French, connection in the States where a lot of mafia is used pizza to yeah it was like the i think to move

heroin if i is that in the movie as well don't they track some guy in the italian mafia in that movie where he's like going around i think it's like a sandwich store like a like a hero i don't know i can't remember it now i think they it's like a sandwich store in brooklyn that the guy uses to launder cash and take the take the gear um i need to rewatch it should we just read should we just watch that as part of this great idea. You know, we were talking about doing, because we've kind of trailed off on the Patreon. So let us know if you guys want this. Doing like a, not like a rewatch thing, but just like watching mafia movies and things like that.

And just like, you know, shooting the shit about them. Me, you and even Dale, our producer. If people are interested in that, let us know. I think we're going to start off watching the first episode of the Turkish remake of the Sopranos. Yeah. But if people actually would want to listen to that. let us know because we'll do it. Yeah, we'll do anything.

I mean, give me $100 and I will literally do anything. Anyway, back to the show. So I just drifted off there and thought, leader number one, right, of Paraguay, we've got Jose Rodriguez de Francia, who gives himself the title, this is a bit, you know, modest, El Suprimo,

aka the supreme and perpetual dictator of Paraguay. He lost 26 years. And then we have guys lasting 32 days, 19 days, 31 days, three years, then nearly 19 years, before we get to Francisco Solano Lopez, El Excellentissimo. That's great, isn't it? Who in 1864 basically commits national suicide. I don't think anyone has done something this done before by declaring war on Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay at the exact same time. Like, mad lad stuff.

Dude, L. Excellentio, I can't even say it, is just, I kind of rules. And then just declaring war on the massive countries next to you for, I assume, no reason. I mean, that's, it's kind of hilarious. It's pretty hilarious in some ways. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, in some of the consequences, I'm sure, are not hilarious. Yeah. This war of the Triple Alliance, as it's called, it ends six years later when Lopez is killed in battle.

By then, this is nuts. Paraguay's population has gone from 525. thousand to 220,000 with just 28,000 men surviving this like utter clown show. I think they drag in Uruguay just for a laugh. They don't even ball to Uruguay. I don't know what Uruguay is doing. Anyway, Lopez, by the way, he becomes a national hero. Yeah, I guess not that, not that hilarious. Wait, is that all, did people flee or did they lose 300,000 people in that war? I think that's killed and displaced, but the army numbers, I don't have it to hand. But like, I think it's like one of the biggest per capita losses of any army ever.

Almost everyone dies. And incredibly, by 1932, by which time Paraguay, by the way, has got through another 33 leaders, it's up for a second brain dead scrap. This one with Bolivia over the Chakle, which people are saying at the time is rich in oil. Spoiler alert, it's not. This time around incredibly, Paraguay wins the war, losing almost another 100,000 people in the process. They must have billions of babies. It still doesn't give the place an appetite for democracy, though.

And by 1954, when a half-Bavarian Chaco War veteran named Alfredo Strosner comes to power in a coup, naturally, Paraguay has churned through presidents at the rate of one every 23 months in its short history. That is Champions League level. That is better than anything in Central Africa. It's impressive. Basically, Paraguay's surrounded geography and constant anxiety over its borders. means that the military has always played an outside role. But soldiers do not effective city planners make. And by the time Stroessner, head of the Colorado party, cements his rule by purging,

torturing and doing all that other good stuff you'd expect from a Latin American despot with gold tassels and epaulets, Paraguay has under 100 miles of paved road. Even in the capital city, most people still get drinking water from peddlers on mealback, and almost nobody has a telephone. Here is an incredible detail from a New York Times piece, quote, The General's Day begins with telephone calls, and it is said that between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., a ring on one of the 82,000 phones in a country of just over 3 million people, is automatically answered, see, signor presidenti. This is so good.

I love those old, like, opening paragraphs in the New York Times pieces. They're so good. Paraguay does have some legitimate businesses. Meat, cotton, timber, or Yehbermarte, the tea drink, but all the mums and dads, even the foreigner, I don't know why they're laughing as Argentines anyway. They're the ones drinking in the park by my apartment late at night. Anyway, yeah, probably some awful hipster bars in Brooklyn and Berlin have got it too.

Oh, yeah, if you live in Bushwick and own a Chee T-shirt, like you're chugging that stuff and you're letting everyone know that you are drinking it as well. Yeah, it's that and what, like, Kratom and the other stuff from Fiji, that stuff that gets you hire? What's that called? No, no, that's kind of like a hipster thing. That's the degenerate thing. But, Yuramata is like, you know, I have a tote bag from the New Yorker and I'm just, I got my mug of Yurba Maud.

It's that sort of vibe. I'm feeling insane. But most of Paraguay's income, though, comes from the black market. Here is Harper's magazine in the 70s, quote, the publicly acknowledged contraband trade is run by military men and a few privileged civilians. Most of the goods come from the United States in large transport planes crammed with cigarettes, whiskey, liqueurs, perfumes, and other expensive items that land at the Assumcant International Airport in the special contraband section. The goods are then reshipped to neighboring South American countries, either in Paraguayan Air Force

planes or on Navy landing strips across the Paraguay and Paranar River's. So Paraguay by this point is the world's largest importer of American cigarettes, smuggled illegally on a fleet of Strosan's military planes. Remember that fact, because it's going to come up in a later show about Paraguay's current state of lawlessness. Strosnabills are police stay on the level of East Germany, for example, or Hodges Albania. Hundreds, if not thousands of Paraguayans work part-time as so-called Piragouis or spies, snitching on friends and their own family.

In fact, Paraguay has more cops per capita than Bulgaria, East Germany or even apartheid South Africa. Laws are written down, but the country is governed by the Guarani concept of Mbareti or Clout. apologies to our many Guarani listeners for the pronunciation there. Prisoners are routinely tortured in cells so small that they cannot stand or send to concentration camps in the Chakal. Their tormentors enabled by Stroseners' non-ending state of martial law. Unaccountability, says Paraguay's Supreme Court, is highly convenient. By the late 1960s over a sixth of all Paraguayan's live in exile,

corruption, meanwhile, is the national sport. In 1971, for example, when Brazil and Paraguay and Paraguayans, I build this colossal hydroelectric dam, still going today, a very powerful thing. Strosner demands a $150 million kickback from the Brazilians. American companies rush into Paraguay when the dam is being built, eyeing up a Wild West hydroelectric boom. But, writes the MIT, quote, they suddenly found they couldn't collect their debts. In a country that is to while you wait bankruptcy proceedings, what Delaware is to instant incorporation papers. Justice is a two-foot-highest statue of a naked woman holding a scale

dwarfed by a new Mussolini modern Supreme Court building funded by the Republic of South Africa. This is not nice South Africa, of course, this is 1970 South Africa. It continues, a play is announced and cancelled. The costumes and sets have disappeared. A European country donates three trucks to Paraguay's Forest Service. They arrive in port, but don't leave the docks. Finally, after a year, the embassy understands.

Customs officials must be bribed to get the gifts into the country. There's this insane moment later on in the New York Times piece where the writer stumbles on the story of two Paraguayans being arrested when they stumble upon a police shakedown scheme, and then they're forced to kneel naked and stare at a white-painted wall for nine hours. And if they try and move or close their eyes, they're beaten. This isn't, quote, the real hard stuff, according to the businessman, but what a perfect image. of pointless totalitarianism.

Two guys staring at a blank wall, being watched by cops who can't look away from them who are themselves being watched by some corrupt generals. I think that is also how they make the Girogan podcast. Stroshener himself embezzles, like, huge riches as leader, as the members of his so-called Golden Four, three Colorado Party ministers and Strosan's presidential secretary who remain fiercely loyal throughout his rule

and hunt down Paraguay and leftists like big game. Strosner rewards them with wealth beyond the imagination of regular Paraguayans, which makes them more loyal, which makes them more zealous in chasing commies, which deepens the repression, which makes them richer and, you know, so on and so forth, you get the picture. The state gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until it's just Strosner and his little gang of four, robbing the people and turning Paraguay into a giant slush fund.

Another feature of Paraguayan strontismo, as it's called, is the dictator's thirst to provide shelter from some of the world's worst people. The country had been openly pro-Nazi during the war, and it's only forced to join the Allied side under American pressure. But this is a thin veil, right? Joseph Mengele, the SS Angel of Death, who performed gruesome medical experiments at Auschwitz. He moves to Paraguay in 1959, living freely under his own name. So two things on that.

One, my grandmother was examined by Mangala at Auschwitz. It's a true story. And two, the freely under his own name thing, you know, in 1960s when Mossad grabbed Eichmann, right? Yeah. When they did that, this is why it's not surprising. When they did that, they were criticized by like a whole bunch of countries. The UN passed a security resolution criticizing them for grabbing Eichmann. So the idea that Mangala would live under his own name isn't that surprising.

No, I mean, do you know what? Like here in BA right next to this studio, there is a giant. like portrait of Eva Peron is everywhere. I don't get it. Someone needs to write in and tell me what the obsession is with this moment in time. Because like how can you, it's like actual national socialism as I understand it. I'm checking and see if the guy's here over his computer. But like, how can you?

Buddy. I don't get it. Someone tell me why they were sharing at Ikeman. Podcast the stand is going hard on that right now. So you know, 1950s in Argentina, you know, not that surprising considering 2026 America, you can, you know, get a whole bump in your ratings if you go that route. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, likewise, in addition to Josef Mengelor, I should say, Heinrich Müller, who was the former

chief of the Gestapo, and Anti Pavlach, head of the Ustasi, this is like the Croatian fascists who run their country's Nazi puppet regime during the war, they're all rocking up in this tiny little country of Paraguay. The famous reporter Jeff Harmon visits Paraguay in search of Mengele for Harper's great. Great piece. And he discovers folks openly Heil Hitlering in the streets. But that's not all. It said that Strosna wants to build a quote, city of the presidents inside Paraguay, where he hopes to offer asylum to overthrowing tyrants like Idi Amin of Uganda and Central African Republic Emperor Jean Vidal Boccasa. In the 1970s, Strosna will welcome ousted Nicaragua

dictator Anastasia Somosa. But that doesn't exactly go to plan and Somoza is, get this, blown up by a bazooka near his Sunsion mansion just a year into life there. Rest in peace to Somoza, he got blown up by a bazooka. Yeah, nice. And then, of course, we get to the drugs. This is the time when Klaus Barbie's paramilitaries are hooking up the coca-producing farmers of the Bolivian Andes with narcos in the fledgling Medellin cartel, enterprising Brazilian traffickers are moving cocaine through the jungles of the Amazon,

and heroin produced in Southeast Asian labs, moved through Asia into Marseille, is transported brought it on to Buenos Aires before being delivered via Paraguay and elsewhere onto the United States, whose urban smack addiction is going through the roof. We've got into this a bunch of the shows. Of course, it's fueled by young men who've gotten hooked on the stuff while serving in the exotic war in Vietnam. Little Paraguay then becomes a vital node in this global network, helped in part by President Strosner, who divies it up between his favorite military generals. Literal tons of cocaine and heroin, their way into Paraguay either on land, dusty border villages deep into the Chacal, or boats floating down the Paraguay or Paranar rivers, and increasingly, Auguste Record has a hand in it all.

Now we're up to 1968. Argentine cops swoop on two of the perpetrators of the Banquilnassian Heist, and they make several massive discoveries. That's from the cold open, the bank robbery. That is. Yeah. You actually don't recall. Side note, you know that I was messaging you guys on what's that the other night when I was walking around that dodgy neighborhood. That was because I wanted to walk on exactly the street that this bank ice took place. And it is an absolute asshole. Maybe I'll send some pictures to the Patreon or something. I don't know, but it's rough, man.

The first man they apprehend, these are the Argentine cops, of course, is Lucien Sarty, a French soldier who had served in Algeria and later as a mercenary in the Congo, boasting that he killed more than 3,000 black people. Sati is also a member of the secret army organization, the OAS, which is a far-right paramilitary group which opposes Algerian independence. The OAS robbed banks across Europe to fund its activities, which include, in 1962, an ambush that narrowly fails to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle, the architect of France giving up its huge colony in North Africa.

And this will form the basis of the amazing novel, the day of the jackal, which I read earlier this year. It's like so good, absolute classic of the spy genre. Yeah, I always thought it was about Carlos the jackal, but it turns out he got the nickname the Jackal because he was found or some of the stuff was found and it included that book. Yeah. Did you know that?

Yeah. Did you watch that recent series with that Eddie Redmayne guy as the jackal? That's pretty good. It's pretty fixed for the book. It's not bad. It's kind of good. No, I've seen, there was a different movie that came out maybe 10 years ago about him, right, that I feel like I watch. He was like also a noted failure.

Like he messed up more than he, he's got this reputation as this like, you know, incredible mercenary, revolutionary. Oh, you mean the Venezuel guy, the jackal? Yeah. Yeah, no, this is different. This is like the day, this is, this is the French guy that they nickname the jackal in the book, but it's based on these guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but the other guy was a bit of a dofice, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, he just messed up constantly.

Yeah. But he has this reputation as being like this premier terrorist mercenary guy. Yeah, similar to the way women think of me. Anyway, child of call responds to this tack in typically dry fashion. It was a long night last night. Joking that, quote, they are such bad shots. French authorities, though, are in a less cheerful mood. They sentence OAS members, including Lucy and Sarty, to death by gillity.

for association with the group. You know, they did the guillotine that late. By now, though, Sarty is long gone. He's in Argentina, living freely in Buenos Aires and working alongside the French connection to establish its new heroin routes through Latin America. This story takes a particularly strange turn in 1963, when Sarty is even thought to be the supposed

second shooter of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, killing the US president from the Grasie Knoll, and it's part of a French connection plot to carry out the assassination. this is a thing. I don't know, let me know if this is like complete BS, but it forms the basis of quite a lot of stuff about the killing. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream

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I should just leave that. I'm sorry what now? Until he's caught in the wake. He's not caught in the other one. He's caught in the wake of the Banquemason heist. I mean, I don't know what's more embarrassing. The second man, the Argentine cops sweep up in the aftermath of that robbery. The leader of the four is Corsican mobster Francois Chiape.

Like August recalled, Chiape makes his name in the sex trade, trafficking women from Corsica, into brothels across France. During the war, Chiape is drafted to fight against the Germans, but he's known to sympathise with the Nazi cause, and it's even said that he's an informant for the Gestapo, just like recalled had been. But Chiape looks nothing like his more famous gangster friend. He's huge, broad-shouldered, moustache with outside's features that earn him the nickname Thick Lips, which is kind of good name. After the war, Chiape joins the shock troops terrorizing unions at Marseilles' docks I mentioned earlier. And then he joins the war in Algeria, getting a rep as a brutal torturer of Arab rebels. Chappé then joins the OAS, gets involved with

the attempted to Gaulle's assassination, and then too flees to Buenos Aires in 1965, helping to make the Argentine capital the key entry point for French connection heroin. In 1968, of course, his court after the bank of Nassian heist alongside Sarty. But incredibly, courts were unable to prove is one of the robbers. Later that year, Chiapé's charges are dropped, and he continues living the criminal life in one of Buenos Aires' glitziest downtown neighborhoods. So now we're into late 1968. August recorders fled Buenos Aires for Paraguay, where he ups his work in the heroin game. Francois Chiape is a free man, and he's intensifying his drug trafficking in Argentina. The French connection is booming, and so is heroin addiction back in the US. A study finds that over a third of

all soldiers in the Vietnam War had used. used the drug while on duty, and a fifth had gotten addicted. In 1948, there had been under 50,000 drug addicts in the entire country. By 1971, there were 300,000. So chronic does the problem get that in 1971 Richard Nixon launches the war on drugs, unleashing a wave of law enforcement and military forces to counter-narco-trafficking across the world. Here is a piece of the Chilean site into Ferentia. Quote, The White House unleashed its full power on the drug networks. Tomaso Bouchetta, a member of the Italian Mafia, in charge of the French connection in

Brazil, was arrested in Rio de Janeiro. A report from the Rio Police stated that the Corsican Union had specialists in executions, air couriers, counterfeiters, experts in bribing appricials, and even a beautiful decoy, the Brazilian model Helena Ferreira, who was used for very specific task. I'm going to say, I'm going to go on the limb and say this specific task are probably not magazine shoots. Anyway, the piece continues, quote, by 1972, drug trafficking had become one of the most lucrative, illicit businesses. The market was demanding a total of 600 million doses of cocaine and heroin into the United States and Europe at prices that increased by 50% compared to just a few years earlier.

Profits were similar or greater than those of illegal gambling, an activity that in 19, had yielded dividends exceeding $50 million for one of the mafia bosses, the Jewish-American Maya Lanski, who you did a show on Lanski back, what, a couple of years ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen to that one too, guys. Just listen, just keep Spotify up and just listen to all of them over and over and over again so we go crazy. Similar to the way the current US administration is labelling drugs like fentanyl was a weapon of war, the US realizes in the early 70s that cocaine, but more importantly, heroin, is a public health disease. disaster. And it goes after the French connection hard. American officials realize how deeply the Corsican Union is wound into the French establishment when it arrests a former agent of the French

CIA for trying to smuggle $12 million worth of heroin into Newark, New Jersey, and he admits they'd been importing the drug with the help of his superiors in the agency. Later in 1972, Francoise-Ciape-Lac runs out when Buenos Aires cops arrest him again, this time for attempting to smuggle 46 kilos of heroin on a plane from BA to the US. Official stateside request Chiape's extradition to face charges there, but the following year Chiape walks out of prison, protected at the highest level of Argentine politics, and he'll live out his days in a retirement home in a city of Cordoba, dying at the princely age of 88 in 2009.

No such life awaits Lucy and Sarty. He too escapes prison in Argentina and flees first to Brazil, then to the United States, And then finally, to Mexico City. There he lives in luxury in the upscale suburb of Polanco and continues trafficking French connection heroin. But on April 27, 1972, Sarty is walking in the neighbourhood when he realizes he's being followed. When the man moves close, Sarty turns and draws his pistol.

But the other man is a commander in the Mexican intelligence and is a better shot. Sarty falls to the floor, dead at the age of 41. U.S. officials make a series of huge heroin busts that blow a hole wide open in the French connection, and it deals a decisive blow when Turkey, one of the key locations for opium production, agrees under pressure from the White House and NATO to ban the growing of poppies altogether. The noose, too, is tightening around the neck of August Record, who Paraguayans now know simply as either Monsieur André or El Vieco, the old one, or the old man.

record is the big prize the guy the americans really want to get their hands on but i'll have to prize him out of the fingers of president strosner recalls drug trafficking is bringing vital riches to the pockets of strozener's cronies and his dictatorship is so tin-pot by the end of the 60s that more of its income comes from narco trafficking than any other market in other words strosner knows that he needs narcos like recall to stay put in paraguay if he's going to avoid being overfroon and quite possibly being shot or tossed off a balcony somewhere. That goal becomes a bit tougher in 1970, however, when a plane carrying 100 kilos of smack crashes in Miami.

One of the pilots works for Taxiero Garani, a firm owned by Colorado Party Bigwig and Strohsner favorite General Andres Rodriguez. This guy takes a $500 per month salary officially. But he also owns currency exchange outlets, a copper wire company, several farming plots and Paraguay's largest brewery. US authorities now think they've got the leverage to make Strosan a handover record, but the detator still refuses.

In July 1972, the Americans are getting seriously irate. They claim the record is responsible for half of all the heroin brought into their country. Here is Secretary of State Bill Rogers in a letter to President Nixon. The Paraguayan government has not acceded increasing pressures by the United States to deny permanently the use of its territory as a transshipment point for narcotics, chiefly heroin, destined for the United States. I believe the next logical step is a personal appeal from you to President Stroessner. At best, your appeal will forcibly drive home to him that his covetive relationship with the United States is now in danger, thus prompting him

the country's undisputed arbiter to be cooperative. At worst, it will ignore your appeal so that we may have to apply more pressure on Paraguay. Strozen does ignore Nixon. So, that September, Nixon goes hard. He threatens to cut off $5 million in aid. 18 months of American arm twisting finally bears fruit. Stroshen relents, an August record, still slim, his puffy sideburns sweeping to a now bald head, age 62, his skin levery from years in the Paraguayan sun, arrives at the courthouse

of New York Southern District and stands. in the dock to face trial for his heroin misdeeds. You know, they really should make a dark comedy about the Southern District, just from all the people that have passed. Terrorists to war criminals, drug traffickers, narcos. It's just wild. I think it was just, you know, Takashi 6-9 in there with Maduro. And they bro down for a minute.

I mean, because like the amount of material that you could do with that. I mean, there's obviously real shows about it, right? But like a dark comedy, I feel like would do wonders. Takeshi 6-9 and then Maduro doing like the chorus, in one of his John Legend, like John, John Legend, that would be even better, John Lennon session. I don't think they ever, I don't think that they ever teamed up for a duet. John Legend, Takeshi 6-9 and Nicholas Maduro, wow.

Yeah, like the traveling Wilburys. I mean, isn't it like prosecution rate at the Southern District like 99% or something crazy? Like almost the Fed's is always, yeah, the Fed, I don't know what the Southern District is, but the feds are something like 85%, 90%, 90%, you know, winning. Yeah, take the plea, man. Yeah, take the plea. Yeah, take the plea. One jailed smuggler says he's bought $100,000 in drug money from New York City to Assumseon,

and he'd seen the box of cash handy personally to record. That is a pretty good witness statement for the prosecution. Media start talking not only of the French connection, which by now has been made infamous by the release of the blockbuster movie starring Gene Hackman, but of the quote, Strosner connection. Most Americans probably still can't place Paraguay on a map at this point, but they all know about its role in the increasing heroin addiction crisis. The case ends on January 30, 1973. Writes an attending New York Times report a quote,

August Joseph Record, who the government calls the largest trafficker of heroin ever brought to trial in the United States, received a maximum 20-year prison sentence in federal court yesterday for conspiracy to smuggle narcotics. Record, a 62-year-old Argentine citizen of Corsican extraction, had been found guilty at a jury trial last month. The small, bald restaurateur known as Monsieur Andre, had been accused of being the mastermind of a many-tentacled ring operating from his Paranise motel restaurant on the outskirts of Asuncione, Paraguay. The presiding US attorney says that Recorder has imported one ton of heroin into the states during his time in Paraguay, nice round figure that, uh, judging by our previous shows, it's probably partly made up. In addition, the attorney claims recorded changed around 400,000 US dollars into Paraguay and

Guaranis at just one of the Asuncion exchange shops he used, probably one of those owned by General Rodriguez, which is worth over $3.1 million in today's money. That's one change of currency. And this is in a country where Nixon withholding $5 million of aid was enough to change its entire presidential policy. So, a way August record goes to spend two decades behind bars, perhaps a death sentence. But this is not the end for him, or his Corsican friend Francois Chiape, or even the dictatorship of Alfredo Strosner. In fact, while US cops are breaking up the French connection, the Strosner connection is, if anything, gathering pace. And in the coming years, it'll add to its roster Chinese nationalists, Lebanese militants, and a whole new cast

of despots and crazies who carry on making Paraguay one of the most lawless places on earth. But that is for another show. We'll see you then. Damn, Paraguay. Who knew, man? Also, like, I love how my episodes these days are like, these two drunken Irish guys in Boston beat each other's brains in. And you're like, here's the global Nazi ratline to heroin conspiracy. Yeah. I mean, you know, be a nita gang. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, guys, patreon.com, so that's a normal podcast, let us know if you want to actually listen to us, go over Turkish Sopranos and other mafia movie crime show things. I don't know, man.

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