The French Connection was a scheme through which heroin was smuggled from Turkey to France and then to the United States. The operation reached its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was responsible for providing the vast majority of the illicit heroin used in the United States. It was headed by the Corsican criminals François Spirito, Paul Carbone and Antoine Guérini, and also involved Auguste Ricord, Paul Mondoloni, Salvatore Greco, and Meyer Lansky. Most of its starting capital came from assets that Ricord had stolen during World War II when he worked for Henri Lafont, one of the heads of the Carlingue (French Gestapo) during the German occupation in World War II.
Read more about French Connection: From The 1930s To The 1950s, The 1960s, The 1970s and The Dismantling of The French Connection, Notable Gangsters in The French Connection, Films
Famous quotes containing the words french and/or connection:
“Sanity is the lot of those who are most obtuse, for lucidity destroys one’s equilibrium: it is unhealthy to honestly endure the labors of the mind which incessantly contradict what they have just established.”
—Georges, French novelist, critic. L’Abbé C, pt. 2, ch. 17 (1950)
“One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.”
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)