How a Nazi French Mobster Made Paraguay a Smugglers’ Paradise

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Transcript

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1:01.4	on April 19, 1968, in Buenos Aires, is bustling Buedo neighborhood. Staff at the local
1:09.2	Banco Nacional, a prettynaded building on one of the
1:12.6	Barrio's main intersections, are ready in the branch for business. But this will be no ordinary
1:18.2	day. Approaching the bank is a group of four young men, two in impeccable grey suits,
1:25.4	two in workers' overalls. They gather beside a door, its lock has
1:29.9	been broken in advance. Then three of the men slip inside, while the fall stays on the street
1:36.0	as a lookout. The two overall men announced they're on site to fix some faulty typewriters,
1:41.6	but their suited pal pulls out a submachine gun and pointed at the staff.
	...

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