Carlos Fernández Bácula

Carlos Fernández Bácula was a Peruvian diplomat who used his diplomatic status to become a prolific smuggler, especially trafficking in narcotics for the Drug Barons of Europe and their leader Elias Eliopoulos, and smuggling for them to Unione Corse, the Sicilian Mafia, the American Mafia, and various White Émigrés. He had no deep family affiliation or membership with any of these groups, and operated mainly as a smuggler and courier for profit, sometimes even acting as a go-between and mediator between families. Utilizing his diplomatic immunity, Bácula transported narcotics and other illicit items in his diplomatic luggage, bypassing customs inspections. According to estimates by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), he smuggled approximately 1.5 tons of narcotics into the United States between 1928 and 1931. His success is considered one of the early models for the later successes of the French Connection.

Eventually, he would be held in suspicion by; Scotland Yard and Malcolm Delevingne, the FBN and Harry J. Anslinger, the Rotterdam police and Adriaan Hendrik Sirks, various Swiss cantonal police departments, the Sureté Nationale, the Canadian Narcotics Division and Charles Henry Ludovic Sharman, and the Egyptian Bureau of Narcotics and Russell Pasha. Their initial plan was to flood North Africa with narcotics, thereby addicting the Allied forces there, and halting their advance in its tracks. That dressmaking store, however, was located only a block away from a heroin processing factory that was owned and operated by Louis Lyon.

Early life Carlos Fernández Bácula was born in Lima, Peru, on March 11, 1888. He was the son of a prosperous cotton merchant. On his paternal side, he is descended from Miho Bácula Jugović, a Croatian emigrant from Trpanj who settled in Peru in 1874. ), where he hosted opulent parties attended by members of the local elite and diplomatic corps. He was also an avid, though often unsuccessful, gambler. However, the majority of traffickers operating in Vienna were foreign nationals. These were the same operations that Bácula took part.

Contemporary far-right publications, including Arbeitersturm, a militant newspaper affiliated with Austria’s National Socialist labor movement, frequently exaggerated and racialized involvement in the drug trade. One 1933 article, for instance, claimed that Jews were responsible for 30% of the global narcotics trade. In Germany, similar publications asserted a decline in Jewish involvement from 24% in 1930 to 3.6% by 1936. During Berlin police raids targeting alleged drug smugglers and currency violators, 339 individuals were arrested at two establishments on Kurfürstendamm, with 317 reportedly identified as Jewish. Early records of the operation indicated that 76 of those detained had prior criminal charges, while others were listed as political suspects or undocumented foreigners. Harry Anslinger writes:"Bacula was a weak sister in this kind of underworld; he was all right as long as others were close by to protect him. But this was not always possible – especially in the jungles of Manhattan. On one of his trips, Bacula was in a New York hotel with 150 kilos of heroin in his baggage which he was attempting to sell. Even in that day, the wholesale value was nearly $400,000. Through a member of the American mob, Bacula sent out 50 kilos to a prospective customer, holding the rest until he received his personal payoff. The messenger arrived back at the hotel shortly thereafter, his head bandaged and bloody. He stated that he had been held up and robbed. With the exception of Bácula, every smuggler that Tschepper named in his account of criminal activity here was Jewish.

Landing in Manhattan in November 1931, he was travelling on a personal passport now that his diplomatic passport had been revoked. However, his luggage was still stamped under diplomatic privilege thanks to a spare set of stamps he had made. Noticing incongruities, and having received intelligence from the newly created FBN, Bácula was detained and held for questioning by a lawyer from the United States Attorney's office. Earlier that week, the Paris police had alerted both Vienna and Budapest police forces about Raskin and Bacula, whom they had been monitoring for suspected narcotics trafficking. According to a radiogram transmitted from the Fünen police to Budapest, both men had recently been arrested in Vienna by the Paris police and subsequently released. The men had claimed false identities, Raskin identifying himself as a Hamburg-based factory director and unlicensed medical practitioner, and Bacula still called himself a Peruvian consul, despite his revoked status.

His wife, Anita, reported being born in Krüth, Alsace, near the offices of Louis Rösler & Son, the firm linked to Raskin and the 1927 smuggling of narcotics into New York. While the Vienna investigation did not establish Bacula’s direct involvement in recent trafficking, it confirmed his continued connections to figures central to the international drug trade. On this basis, the authorities ordered his expulsion and notified French officials to obtain further information on his activities.

In December 1937, Austrian officials intercepted a shipment of opium concealed in a train car en route to Paris. Documentation associated with the cargo implicated Bácula in the trafficking operation. French request and declined it. Under the Franco-Swiss extradition treaty, the alleged offense was not covered, and the penalties specified in Switzerland’s 1924 Narcotics Law were considered too lenient to allow extradition under the treaty’s provisions. The French Embassy was informed that reciprocity could be considered if Swiss legislation were revised to increase the maximum penalties. Another man, a smuggler in New York named Jonathan Gottlieb, was arrested by the United States Customs Service. Afterwards, he reportedly committed suicide in his cell at Albany County Jail. His confession, according to the United States Department of the Treasury (the parent department of the FBN), "was of importance in crushing this drug conspiracy."

Legal defense In contesting his extradition, Bácula centered his defense on both assertions of personal innocence and a broader critique of transnational policing practices originating in Vienna and the United States. He argued that the international campaign against him stemmed primarily from the memorandum written by Bruno Schultz in May 1931: information, he claimed, that was based on unfounded allegations made by a known trafficker seeking to shift blame. According to Bácula, this memo led law enforcement agencies to label him a trafficker, initiating what he described as a cyclical exchange of misinformation. Accusations originating in Vienna were relayed to Paris and then returned to Vienna as seemingly corroborated evidence.

The proposed route involved smuggling heroin through Spain, then across the Strait of Gibraltar into North Africa. Carbone’s Corsican network, which maintained influence over local establishments including brothels, would facilitate the storage and distribution of the drug. One key figure in the operation was Antoine Peretti, Carbone’s distant cousin and a former manager of the Chantilly nightclub, once frequented by the Paris elite. Although Carbone framed the operation as ideologically motivated, intended to hinder Allied progress, he also stood to benefit financially. Before moving forward, however, he requested the release of his associate, Carlos Fernández Bácula. known by the codename "JIGGER," submitted the following report:In June 1943, Paul CARBONE, thru Simon SAPIANI (SHAEF card #240), suggested to Lt. Col. von ESCHWEGE, then Laiter II in Paris, that subject be released from the French concentration camp at Tourelles. BACULA had been sent there as an "undesirable" because he had been involved in the drug traffic and had been punished in Germany, then extradited to France. CARBONE thought that BACULA might be of interest to Abwehr II. As a matter of fact, CARBONE had talked to von ESCHWEGE earlier about a plan which called for getting heroin into North Africa. Von ESCHWEGE accepted this plan, by which the Germans were to get the drug into the hands of Corsicans who would get it into North Africa thru Spain. Once there it would find its way into the "maisons do tolerance" operated by Corsicans (Peretti at Algerete - SRAEF card No. 754.) Possibly identical with Antoine PERETTI (SHAEF card No. 716). In this way von ESCHWEGE thought he could direct it toward the military element.

Although the North African heroin infiltration plan was ultimately abandoned, Bácula managed to obtain forged identification documents during this period. He spent the remainder of the Second World War living in concealment in Paris.

Later life Following the end of World War II, Bácula again became the subject of international scrutiny. Agents from the FBN continued their efforts to monitor his movements (several FBN agents were in fact working for the OSS during the war), tracing him from Paris to Peru, and later to Chile. However, they found no conclusive evidence linking him to renewed narcotics activity. Meanwhile, the newly created Interpol issued a notice requesting that member states maintain surveillance of Bácula.

In 1957, nearing his seventieth birthday, Bácula formally petitioned Interpol to end its monitoring of him. The request was granted, and he lived the remainder of his days in Chile.