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Date Published: 18/01/2023

ARCHIVED - French actor, Jean Claude Pautot, one of 15 arrested in Marbella cocaine smuggling ring

ARCHIVED ARTICLE -

The trafficking ring has been taken down in a joint French-Spanish police operation

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - French actor, Jean Claude Pautot, one of 15 arrested in Marbella cocaine smuggling ring

French actor Jean Claude Pautot is one of 15 people arrested in Marbella, Spain as part of an operation to take down a criminal organisation that smuggled cocaine into Europe on sailing boats.

The actor, who has been arrested in the Malaga town, is accused of being an intermediary between the French and Spanish branches of the dismantled drug trafficking organisation, in an operation in which a tonne of cocaine was seized on a sailing boat boarded near the Portuguese Azores islands.

Jean Claude Pautot, who is linked to the Marseille mafia, has previously been arrested in connection with a bank robbery and imprisoned. After his release from prison, he played a supporting role as a thief in the 2022 film L’Innocent (The Innocent).

Now, the Spanish Police and the Guardia Civil, together with French security forces, have dismantled the organisation of which he was a part. Most of the 1,000 kilos of cocaine that they found was seized at the end of December on one of the organisation’s sailboats, which was boarded northeast of the Azores Islands by Spanish police forces aboard a Spanish Navy vessel.

The investigation first began in the summer of 2021 when the Guardia Civil became aware of the arrival of a sailing boat in El Puerto de Santa María (Cadiz), captained by a French citizen, which they suspected of being linked to cocaine trafficking.

The investigators then requested information about them from the French police authorities through the OFAST (Anti-Narcotics Office). They then discovered that the captain had already been rescued in 2018 in the English Channel after his boat sank, also allegedly carrying cocaine.

Images: Guardia Civil/Policía Nacional

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