MLE Expropriator Groups and Their Activities in France, Instalment 2 of 2

Part one is at: https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/1c5cn3 

[…] We left off this topic in late 1948, so let us pick it up again in early 1949. 1949 was a disastrous year for the action groups operating inside Catalonia […] As we saw in the previous entry, expropriation actions had been intense, albeit that up to then, losses had been few. But since there was no let-up in the groups’ activities which carried on flat-out, the security forces were eventually placed on the alert and mobilized. The French police and State escalated their efforts, the upshot being the loss of some clandestine presses, some cover firms were exposed, the Norecrin light airplane was found as was the speedboat operating out of Sète and, above all, a fair number of the expropriator gangs were dismantled. Besides which the MLE had given up trying to keep Cerrada in check and was often blatantly against him and starting to boot a lot of its members out of the Organization. In fact, Laureano Cerrada and his Paris group were thrown out in January 1950. 

Much of the membership and above all the MLE bureaucratic machine could no longer put up with the Cerrada team’s hobnobbing with criminal types in Marseilles or in Paris, nor with their actions designed to raise funds for the organization, actions involving, primarily, mass counterfeiting of all sorts of papers and tickets, topped off by the business with those currency plates – albeit that I will leave that for another article – which would soon follow, as well as the business of plotting from within the MLE to assassinate some quite well-known personalities. I shall also be mentioning a few new details that have emerged and which complement the articles written to date.

But back for now to the expropriator groups which carried on, against hell and high water, with their tireless efforts to raise funds for the prisoners and their dependents, funds to finance the CNT press, support the guerrilla teams crossing over into Spain, or libertarian projects in France itself; the following operations are indicative of all these:

31 January 1949: Armed robbery targeting the same street and the same driver as the previous raid. (Remember that on 31 December 1948, there had been a failed attempt to hold up the Evreux-to-Breteuil post office van. Two members of the gang disguised as gendarmes checked out a car and pulled the van over. Making off with 2,000,000 francs. This was Villagrasa’s group.

31 March 1949: Bank hold-up in Noisy le Grand (Seine-Saint Denis), netting 250,000 francs. The work of the Villagrasa-Magne group.

July 1949: Raid on the SNCF in Toulouse. We do not know what proceeds, if any, resulted from this. 

31 August 1949: After flagging down a suspect vehicle in Paris, police officer Albert Neufcourt was killed and his colleague seriously wounded. Among the alleged perpetrators was José Soto Suárez who had obtained the guns from his uncle, Ángel Soto Ortiz. Two other names came to light – Wenceslao Giménez Orive and a certain Rodolfo Benet Ferrer. The assumption is that they were out to steal a car to ferry arms to the border.

Between August and the end of 1949: A cash van in transit was held up in Saint Etienne after several failed attempts. The proceeds are not known. The perpetrators were the Lyon group – the Bailo brothers, Francisco Pérez and Antonio Puncel. 

15 October 1949: Arrests in France occurred at the same time as disaster struck in Barcelona. After a car chase through Paris, two armed anarchists were arrested. One was the Spaniard Arjona and the other was an Italian by the name of Antonio Lucchetti who was caught in possession of the handgun used in the killing of officer Neufcourt back in August.

27 October 1949: Armed robbery of the Société Parisienne d’Escompte, netting 3,000,000 francs. Villagrasa was credited with being the leader of the gang involved in this raid with a further 4 comrades.

30 November 1949: Gendarmes arrest José Villagrasa from Cerrada’s action groups. He was arrested in the home of a comrade by the name of Coria where two handguns and the stolen cash bags from Charenton were found.

December 1949: Liberto Botey, Rafael Satorras, Marcel Durando and the Serra couple were arrested in Marseilles in connection with the 15 million francs’ worth of platinum stolen in July 1944, when they attempted to sell part of the swag to an Armenian jeweller. The jeweller was arrested too.

17 December 1949: A car was stolen from the Rue Flachet in Villeurbane in Lyon. Francisco Bailo and Juan Sánchez were behind this.

23 December 1949: The wages clerk at the “Lyon Rubber Manufacturers” was assaulted in an abortive robbery attempt. He was carrying a briefcase holding 4,500,000 francs, but in spite of the assault, he managed to break free and escaped. The assailants were Francisco Bailo, who was acting as the getaway driver and was carrying a sub-machinegun, and Juan Sánchez who was armed with a revolver.

31 December 1949: Raid on the postal depot in Saint Priest, proceeds not known. The French gendarmes credited this robbery to the ‘Los Maños’ group. The actual perpetrators were Antonio Jordán, Luis Polón Suárez, Orlando Lazzarotto and a fourth person by the name of Pérez.

***

21 January 1950: Jeweller’s store in Caen (Calvados) raided, netting 3,000,000 francs. José Soto Suárez was involved in this raid and he would be accused of murdering the police officer in Paris on 31 August 1949.

February 1950: Raid on a theatrical agency in Paris. Proceeds 3,000,000 francs. The French gendarmes credited the ‘Los Maños’ group with this raid.  The French police were mistaken in crediting these two robberies to the ‘Los Maños’ group. That group had crossed the border, bound for Barcelona, on 22 December 1948, only to be smashed by the police on 9 January 1950. 

Early March 1950: José Soto Suárez arrested in Paris in connection with the theft of a taxi and the killing of officer Albert Neufcourt.

12 March 1950: Raid on the ‘La Renaissance’ jeweller’s on the Avenue Jaurès in Lyon, netting 4,000,000 francs’ worth of gems.

16 April 1950: Vicente Servatón Just, a member of the expropriation groups, arrested in a Paris café. A month earlier he had successfully escaped when caught on the hop in his home on the Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, by throwing himself out of a fourth story window on to a neighbouring rooftop lower down before shinning down a drain pipe into the street below. 

Regarding the raid below, we know neither the exact date nor the proceeds obtained, but it involved an assault on the cashier at the Silva company.

Armed hold-up at the Food Voucher Administration Centre on the Rue Jules Gusde in Paris, netting at least 1,2000,000 francs. This was the doing of ‘El Pelao’’s group and the Bailo brothers. I have placed it after the one above because I also do not have the details regarding the date.

May 1950: José Bañón and Antonio Pérez were arrested in Paris and Miguel Maldonado at the same time in Saint Etienne, all of these in connection with the 1944 armed robbery in Pau, which had netted between 350 and 800 million francs, primarily in the form of jewellery belonging the to Belgian royal family. 

27 May 1950: Attempted theft of a car from Lyon’s Rue Buire. The attempt was abandoned when the would-be thieves found wire cages inside and realized that it belonged to a Flying Squad superintendent.  They were Francisco Bailo and Juan Sánchez.

1 June 1950: Car stolen from the Rue Malesherbes in Lyon by Francisco Bailo and Juan Sánchez.

June 1950, date unspecified: Francisco Bailo moves a batch of weapons to the coastal area around Sète (Hérault department).

13 June 1950: After an attempted robbery at a hydraulic pump firm on Paris’s Rue de Sahel, gunshots were exchanged between the police and the raiders. After that the Spanish anarchist Manuel Pérez was arrested, fatally injured. He had 8 previous convictions under his belt and was using the alias Emile Antón.

23 June 1950: Raid on the Monty warehouses on the Rue Brest in Lyon. They raiders made off with 300,000 francs’ worth of textile goods. The raiders were Francisco Bailo and Juan Sánchez.

25 July 1950: Raid on the Damian stores on the Rue Malesherbes in Lyon. Carried out by Francisco Bailo and Juan Sánchez. 

29 July 1950: Citroen car stolen from a Monsieur Balay in Villeurbanne, Lyon by Juan Sánchez and Francisco Bailo.  

14 August 1950: Three failed attempts at armed robbery on National Route No 7 at Saint-Simphorion d’Ozon (Seine department). The robbers blocked off the road and intercepted a touring car containing a Belgian couple who escaped by running across the fields. They then intercepted a saloon car carrying a female Irish national who, as the records testified, screamed so much that they had to abandon the attempt. A third vehicle managed to escape by driving into the ditch. The would-be robbers were Francisco Bailo, who was behind the driving wheel and carrying a sub-machinegun, Juan Sánchez, who also had a sub-machinegun, and Vidal Cantero, likewise armed with a sub-machinegun.

28 August 1950: Failed attempt at armed robbery of a lorry driver in Villeurbanne’s Rue Chiret. Francisco Bailo and Juan Sánchez were behind this.

30 August 1950: Van and all the goods inside stolen in the Lyon area.

9 September 1950: Car stolen from Lyon’s Rue Plevel. Francisco Bailo and Juan Sánchez were responsible.

11 September 1950: Raid on the warehouses in Lyon’s Rue Pierre Sémard. As much as 40,000 francs netted. Those responsible were the sub-machinegun wielding Francisco Bailo, José Bailo who also had a sub-machinegun, Juan Sánchez, armed with a revolver, and Raimundo Bonías, armed with a sub-machinegun. Bonias was the getaway river.

30 September 1950: Van carrying textiles stolen in the Place Doyenne in Lyon. Up to 1,200,000 francs’ worth of goods netted. The robbers were Francisco Bailo and Juan Sánchez. José drove away in the stolen Citroen [José Bailo we assume, and presumably the one stolen on 29 July 1950, KSL] leaving the other two to drive the van. 

30 October 1950: Failed robbery of a Catalan by the name of Batlle, who was seriously injured during the raid on Lyon’s Rue Augustins. 

November 1950: Hold-up at the Rue Boileau Recette Auxiliaire in Lyon.

23 November 1950: Post office van held up on the Rue Duguesclin in Lyon, in which a sack holding 705,000 francs was removed. Those involved were the Bailo Mata brothers and Juan Sánchez aka ‘El Pelao’, with Francisco Bailo as getaway driver.

Between 29 July and 27 December 1950, the following raids or attempted robberies took place: a Citroen was stolen from a Monsieur Maccharah at No 3, Rue Garibaldi; an attempt was made to steal a car from Monsieur Thorelle at No 18 Rue Michelet; goods were stolen from Monsieur Hivrier’s lorry on the Rue Paniset and two cars were stolen from the garage on the Rue Broquin. All of these robberies or attempted robberies were the handiwork of Juan Sánchez and Francisco Bailo.

27 December 1950: Vehicle stolen from the Rue des Belgues in Lyon: Antonio Guardia Socada was responsible.

***

17 January 1951: Failed robbery at the Rue Cheppennes post office branch by the same gang as struck again the following day. The car used had been stolen by Antonio Guardia Socada. The raiders chose to abort the raid due to the numbers of people at the post office branch.

18 January 1951: Cerrada, José Calpe and José Ballus were put in prison in Evreux after they were caught counterfeiting currency in Gaillon where they had a small printing press set up. The French newspapers on the same day reported their arrests which almost went unnoticed, due to the hold-up in Lyon drawing all of the attention. 

18 January 1951: The notorious, dramatic Lyon armed hold-up. At 7.00 p.m., something changed in the relationship between the MLE and the French government. A black front-wheel drive Citroen stolen the previous week in the Ain district and carrying the plates 1878-E69 blocked the path of a post office van on the Rue Duguesclin and forced it to a halt. Three of the car doors flew open and four men armed with sub-machineguns alighted: one of them had long hair, as the newspapers would highlight; whilst two of the men kept watch, the other two robbers cautiously approached the van. At that very moment, one of the guards got out of the vehicle, waiting for bank staff to emerge with the bags of cash. Before he knew what was happening, the raiders tried to come up behind the guard and order him to freeze, but he fought back and managed to break free of them. When the guard moved aside, dodging the attackers and trying to draw his gun, a burst of machine-gun for left him sprawled on the pavement. The next salvo was directed at the cabin of the van, smashing its windows and hitting the occupants. Panic and chaos ensued: there were people rushing around in every direction and people lying on the ground. And the proceeds? Nothing, nada, because the person tasked with carrying the cash out of the bank had yet to set foot on the street. In the course of the gunfight, one of the gang members took a bullet in the leg, but, plainly, it was the guards who had come off worst. The members of the raiding group picked up their wounded comrade and headed back towards the Citroen, with its engine still running, and fled away down the deserted street as fast as they could. And the upshot of the raid? Two guards dead, a passer-by also dead, another of the guards badly wounded and a further eight people hurt. Who was behind it? Juan Sánchez aka ‘Pelao’, brothers José and Francisco Bailo Mata, Joan Catalá and Antonio Guardia.

30 January 1951: 37 year-old Juan Sánchez aka Pelao arrested in Lyon, he being ‘the long-haired suspect’.

2 February 1951: Police tracked down Francisco Bailo Mata who was hiding out in the Des Iris quarter. A few days after that, police stumbled upon the corpse of his brother José with a bullet wound to the head and a short note explaining that he did not want to see any more blood spilled and that all was lost. The police put it out that it was a suicide note. But the testimony from the daughter of Felisa Bailo Mata, Francisco’s and José’s sister, offers a different version of events: “My parents learnt of José’s suicide from a radio bulletin. In 2002 we read in the Lyon Newspaper Library that he had been shot from behind. No member of the family was asked to identify the body. It finished up in an unknown grave. It is a queer sort of suicide that involves a gunshot from behind.” Joan Catalá and Antonio Guardia were also to be arrested during the first fortnight that month.

13 February 1951: Whilst chasing up some leads relating to the Lyon hold-up, the French police found out about the Norecrin light plane. It was at around that time that Pedro Abella Rebull was also found, supposedly a suicide, at the hotel to which he used to drive the van used to pick up the gear that Cerrada’s people had been transporting with the plane. The lifeless body of his lover or partner was also discovered.

1 March 1951: Antonio Jiménez from the Lyon group was arrested in Bordeaux. After lying low in Paris he had moved on to Bordeaux where he was picked up by the police.

Late 1959: Sabaté mounted an armed robbery in France (location and proceeds not known) but, thanks to the pamphlet Lucio, l’anarchiste fantasy and information gleaned from the Catalan historian Argimiro Ferrero, we know that ‘El Quico’, Francisco Conesa, Antonio Miracle, Luis Andrés Edo and Lucio Urtubia were involved. For Conesa and Miracle it was their first (and last) hold-up. The proceeds were used to cover the costs of an expedition to Barcelona and, quite possibly, to help the families of the men who were heading south during the time that they were away.

So far, so good, gang. Our next entry will, I think, focus on the armed robbery in Pau in 1944, as it is not every day that such huge proceeds were involved and not every day that a monarchy (even if only the Belgian monarchy) is robbed. So, if only to rub the monarchists and law-abiders in general up the wrong way, our next entry will be given over to that jewel heist.

El Salto, 27 May 2025 https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ni-cautivos-ni-desarmados/grupos-expropiadores-del-mle-actividades-francia-2a-parte 

Image: Francisco Bailo (source: Imanol)

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.