He appeared in the fall in “The Innocent”, the last feature film by Louis Garrel, alongside whom he plays a robber crook. The comedy was presented out of competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Fiction seems to have met reality: the former criminal Jean-Claude Pautot, supposed to have redeemed himself for several years by becoming a comic book author and actor, was arrested at the end of December off the Azores on a sailboat carrying 740 kg of cocaine, a Spanish source close to the investigation said on Monday, confirming information from the JDD.
“During his arrest, Jean-Claude Pautot was on a sailboat loaded with 740 kg of cocaine” sailing “in international waters” at “150 miles” nautical from the Portuguese archipelago, she said. Nine other people – French, Spaniards and Moroccans – were arrested as part of this investigation, still ongoing, which relates to the transport of drugs between South America and the Paris region. Information that Le Parisien had revealed at the end of December.
Former figure of organized crime, Jean-Claude Pautot was placed under judicial control in the Spanish province of Cadiz (south). After decades of robberies, prison and on the run, he said he had settled down, becoming an artist-painter and co-writing the comic book “Face au Mur”, a fiction directly inspired by his life.
In the fall of 2022, Jean-Claude Pautot aspired to “stay calm”
“I am a happy man. I have my little dog, I have a life, I paddle, my morning jog. I have two children. I did not raise the big one, but I take care of the little one, he confided to Parisian last November on the occasion of the release of Louis Garrel’s film. To be well, to have health, to remain calm. What is normal for people, I savor it at 66 years old. »
According to the JDD, the sailboat had left Martinique and arrests also took place in France, where an additional 390 kg of cocaine were seized as part of this operation carried out jointly by the French and Spanish authorities.