Auguste Ricord

Auguste Joseph Ricord, nicknamed Il Commandante, (died 1985) was 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 and then extradited to the US. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison and spent 10 years in jail until pardoned. He then returned to Paraguay in 1983 and died two years later.

An expose of Ricord "The Hunt for Andre" was published in Reader's Digest May 1973 pp. 225–259