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Elias Eliopoulos

Elias "Elie" Eliopoulos was a Greek smuggler who was, alongside his brothers George and Ananassius (Nassos), one of the most prominent and important Mafia members of the early 20th century. The brothers eventually became known as the Drug Barons of Europe, taking the highest positions in Unione Corse in Marseille and Paris in the 1920's and 30's. Elias Eliopoulos was the head of the family. Their organized narcotics and drugs network spanned the globe, from China to California via Afghanistan, Turkey, London, and New York. Historians suggest that when the Eliopoulos Brothers were at their peak in the 1930's, they were the largest narcotics and drugs network in the entire world. Eliopoulos was made one of the most wanted people by many of the world's leading narcotics bureaus, including the Central Narcotics Bureau of the Egyptian Government, and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), and was especially hunted by Malcolm Delevingne, Harry J. Anslinger, and Russell Pasha. He mentored many of the more famous gangsters that followed, including August Del Gracio, Jacques Voignier, and Paul Carbone. In effect, the Drug Barons of Europe are considered the spiritual grandfathers of Carbone's French Connection. In a 1943 ''Life'' magazine article, journalist Gerard Piel described the brothers’ criminal enterprise as functioning like a “central bank and clearing house” for a large portion of the world’s illicit trade in opium, morphine, and heroin.

When describing the network of the Drug Barons of Europe, the French magazine ''Détective'' wrote:

"From Japan to New York, via Marseille! From the skyscrapers of Broadway to the plains of Manchuria! From the docks of Hamburg to the pyramids of Egypt! From the Bosphorous to the Champs-Élysées. There is something for everyone. The setting is as vast as the universe.

Now animate this famous selection of images with the magical names of the modern age: export, import, orders, bills of lading, invoices, telegrams, banks, palaces, and telephone! All of this will find its place here.

Boats, sleeping cars and planes will not be too much either. Everything that circulates in space, everything that connects countries to each other, across borders, will be used: this great black and white liner that goes up the Red Sea; this express with blue cars that runs along the Nishava pass in Bulgaria; this plane that flies over the stone spires of Strasbourg; this fast ship that, with all lights out, glides over the sleeping waters..."

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