Using boats, cargo ships, lorries, passenger cars or... submarines, drug traffickers use a variety of strategies, some of them clever, some of them dangerous and some of them highly original, to carry out their illegal deliveries. Bodies of water are often used to cross borders, whether via the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea, and even Lake Geneva, which has also been used for smuggling.
In 1990, a trafficker operating between Montreux and Thonon came up with the idea of delivering his hashish parcels to France using a pocket submarine. To do this, he built a small submarine with room for just one person. This clever and discreet manoeuvre enabled him to make his deliveries without being caught by the border guards. But the story remains vague and little known... Later, the smuggler bequeathed his submarine to a priest in a secret confession. Was he remorseful? No one knows. But the submersible was later sold to a customs official, a keen collector of anything remotely related to objects used in fraud, masking or disguising reality to evade legal trade or tax authorities.
Today, this submarine smuggler can be found in the Bernese countryside. There, he spends his retirement in the garden of a 19th-century mansion. Will it one day return to Lake Geneva, and if so, for a more honest purpose?
Photo left: interior of the submarine with its hashish loaves.
Photo right: the pocket submarine in its new home.
Photo credits and information taken from the booklet associated with the exhibition Trésors ressuscités du Léman, published by AUBP (Association des Usagers des Bains des Pâquis), Geneva.
