Louis Lyon

Louis Théodore François Lyon (or Lion) was a prominent restaurateur and member of the Parisian social elite, who owned a popular restaurant on . During World War I, Lyon was employed by the Deuxième Bureau and was involved heavily in running guns for the French military. Lyon then entered into the French criminal underworld, becoming a prominent gangster and drug dealer in the years of Interwar France. He was a close associate of the Drug Barons of Europe, a group of brothers led by Elias Eliopoulos. In that network, he would come to be known as the Roi de la Droga, or the Drug Kingpin of Paris. The network of the Drug Barons of Europe is considered by historians to be the predecessor of the French Connection. Despite his repeated implication in trafficking operations and his reputation in contemporary accounts as a leading figure in the narcotics trade, Lyon frequently avoided prosecution, unlike many of his associates who received extensive prison sentences. He was eventually prosecuted in Paris in the trial that was known in the Parisian press as L'Affair Lyon, or the Lyon Affair. This was a trial that was covered in most of the French newspapers of the era, but he was released from prison before the Battle of France. During World War II, Lyon served in the French Resistance, arranging a resistance mission against the Abwehr II which killed Lyon's main rival, the gangster and Nazi collaborator Paul Carbone.

The newspaper Paris-soir writes:"Louis Lyon is, moreover, a very strange figure in this milieu. Rich in millions, he led a peaceful existence in a bourgeois apartment on Rue de la Pompe. Never in name only in a "delicate affair," while for many he presides only over the destiny of a very Parisian restaurant, for those in the know, in the shadows, he presides over the drug trade throughout the 'Butte.' "

The establishment, which was also called Jean Casenave, attracted a political and literary clientele from the upper echelons of the Parisian elite, including visitors such as Jean Giraudoux and Abel Hermant, and was recalled fondly by in his memoirs. After the Second World War, the restaurant continued to attract an affluent clientele, and it was even used by Pierre Wertheimer and Félix Amiot to relaunch their business activities after the Liberation. Lyon also became the proprietor of the Château de Gressy, a former 17th-century fortified farm with several buildings, including an axial tower, and manor castle in the town of Gressy, Seine-et-Marne that served as a secondary residence for the family. Château de Gressy was located about thirty minutes from Paris by car. By the 1930s, his net worth was in the millions.

Scandals also surrounded Lyon's activities in Montmartre. He was said to have affairs, and he frequented the cabarets found throughout the French capital. He was known as a con artist and a card shark.

However, there were no true kings of the narcotics trade until the 1926 arrival of three Greek brothers; George, Elias, and Nassos Eliopoulos, collectively known as the Drug Barons of Europe. These brothers organized operations that transported opium from the Shanghai French Concession and French Indochina (where the colonial government operated the Opium Regie) to French alkaloid factories, where it was refined into heroin. The product was then distributed internationally, first back to China, and later to the United States. The investigation had been launched following the death of Wilhelm Koffler in a hotel room, who had been a member of a small Jewish and Russian émigré criminal network in Vienna. The New York City Police Department ruled that Koffler had committed suicide, but most of the world's narcotics enforcement community concluded that the gangster was most likely killed by Legs Diamond (although the Nazis later heavily suggested that the assassin was a member of the Jewish-American mafia). The investigation in Vienna eventually connected Lyon to their case. In 1935, he traveled to the United States accompanied by his attorney , a former deputy in the French Chamber of Deputies. Investigators also traced Lyon's activities to Belgrade, where he obtained supplies through the trafficker Towazowitch, a former railway employee dismissed in 1913 for opium smuggling. Towazowitch, despite repeated arrests for narcotics offenses between 1931 and 1933, later presented himself as a banker while continuing illicit dealings. Lyon was regarded as one of his principal buyers, reselling narcotics to American contacts.

At the time of the proceedings, French narcotics law was based on a 1916 statute regulating toxic substances. The law provided for penalties of 6 months to 2 years in prison, along with fines. As a result, Lyon and his accomplices faced a maximum of 2 years imprisonment, in stark contrast to the United States, where equivalent crimes carried terms of 15 to 20 years. French authorities were considering reforms that would increase penalties to between two and five years and prohibit convicted traffickers from residing in key cities such as Paris, Le Havre, and Marseille.

World War II and career in the French Resistance His sentencing, which had been scheduled for two years, was quickly interrupted. Shortly before the French entry into World War II, Lyon was credited with exposing an arms cache belonging to the Cagoulards, a clandestine far-right organization modeled on fascist movements. During the war, he provided information to the French Resistance regarding German intelligence agents who attempted to infiltrate Resistance networks under the guise of anti-Nazi sympathizers. Several of these agents were subsequently apprehended.

During the war, his work for the French Resistance intensified. He killed his former associate, Paul Carbone, by organizing a mission to derail the train that Carbone was riding on, and also killed several of his other former associates who had allied themselves with the Nazis and German intelligence. Upon the death of Carbone, François Spirito fled to Madrid. After the Liberation, the French government awarded Lyon the Legion of Honor. It is currently unknown how much Lyon was involved with Operation Underworld, but one of his close confederates was August Del Gracio, who initially organized the operation with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).