Jean-Claude Pautot walked smiling in the spring of 2022 on the red carpet of the Cannes film festival.
He had a supporting role as a thief in the Louis Garrel film
The Innocent
and, at 66, the media hailed him as a great example of reinsertion.
A habitual criminal and repeat bank robber, he spent 25 years in prison, from which he managed to escape on several occasions.
After serving his sentence, he devoted himself to painting with some success.
Also to writing: he is a scriptwriter for the comic
Frente al muro
, inspired by his own story and published in Spain at the end of last year.
A frequent traveler to the Costa del Sol, what was not known then is that Pautot also served as a liaison between the Spanish and French branches of drug traffickers who brought cocaine to Europe from the Caribbean.
He was arrested on December 27 in Marbella in a joint operation between France and Spain where members of the Marseillaise mafia have also been killed.
The arrival of a sailboat at Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz) in the summer of 2021 set off the alarms of the Civil Guard.
Its captain was a French citizen who was linked to drug trafficking.
In fact, in 2018 he was rescued in the English Channel after the boat he led sank, allegedly loaded with cocaine.
After his arrival in Cadiz, he maintained contact with a compatriot who was being tracked down by the National Police because of his relationship with international drug trafficking.
He had no police record, but his last name is linked to that of a family closely linked to cocaine in Paris.
Both of them frequently met with French people settled in Marbella, some of them "historical members of the Marseillaise mafia", according to sources of the investigation.
04:22
Narcos Marbella
The group was dedicated to bringing cocaine to Spain to distribute it in Malaga and Cádiz, but also in Paris and its metropolitan area.
The organization had a clear structure.
On one side, the Spanish side, based in Marbella and dedicated to contacting drug suppliers from Colombia and Venezuela.
On the other side, the French, who was in charge of the distribution of the merchandise.
The role of the former bank robber, Pautot, was to bring the two branches into contact.
"He was not the ringleader, but he did have a relevant role," sources in the operation emphasize.
The police monitoring revealed that in the fall of 2022 the organization had launched what appeared to be a new cocaine transport.
One of those investigated traveled through Spain to meet with his Venezuelan partners and also traveled to Paris where, together with his brother, he put different packages in and out of an apparently empty apartment.
Meanwhile, the captain of the sailboat that had docked in Cádiz a year before traveled to Martinique, a French island in the Caribbean, north of Venezuela, where he purchased, repaired and conditioned a sailboat.
In November he left for Europe, but first he deviated from his route for a few hours to Isla Margarita, off the Venezuelan coast.
Later she returned to her course towards the European continent by the route of the Azores.
About 150 nautical miles from these Portuguese islands, precisely, the sailboat was boarded on December 27 by a Spanish Navy ship, where agents from the Civil Guard, the National Police and the French Anti-Narcotics Office were also traveling.
Inside it, 740 kilos of cocaine distributed in 25 bales were found.
The agents arrested both the captain and a man of Venezuelan nationality who had embarked as a notary to ensure that the merchandise reached the agreed place.
One of the detainees during the operation against drug trafficking on sailboats. Civil Guard/National Police (Civil Guard/National Police/EFE)
That same day other arrests were made on land, both in Marbella and in other cities in Spain and France.
Two firearms were found in a home in Salamanca and another 345 kilos of cocaine and a pistol were found in a Paris apartment.
In addition, almost 800,000 euros in cash were intervened.
The operation, called Galankore and coordinated by the European judicial cooperation agency Eurojust, ended with a total of 15 people arrested, including both the leaders of the organization and those who transported, distributed or financed it, as well as collaborators. close.
At the end of November, the National Police managed to intercept another sailboat that, on this occasion, was traveling from Spain to Argentina loaded with 56 kilos of ecstasy distributed in 28 packages.
The boat was the same with which in 2020 1.5 tons of cocaine had been transported to Marbella.
The operation culminated in the arrest of five people, three on the Costa del Sol and another two in the Cadiz town of Tarifa.
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