Articles Related to Aris Nyad’s post-WWII Greece-Switzerland Smuggling Operation

In the years just after World War II, the United States poured millions of dollars into Greece to support the government in their Civil War against the communists. Many of those dollars ended up in the pockets of wealthy Greeks. In order to shield their wealth from inflation, rich Greeks traditionally kept their money in the form of gold sovereigns, the importation of which was illegal. Enter Aris Nyad and his friends. To satisfy a U.S.-generated need to exchange dollars for gold, they engineered a smuggling operation that was “the biggest in Greece's history.”

 

The above quotes come from Andreas Papandreaou’s Democracy at Gunpoint: The Greek Front, pages 74–79. Though Papandreou doesn’t mention Aris Nyad, he details what brought the smuggling operation into existence and how it worked.

 

In 1949, a Swiss court convicted Nyad in absentia. They fined him $50,000 and sentenced him to three years in prison. He eventually served time in Zurich for fraud.

 

(Also see Aris Nyad biographical timeline.)

 

1948

 

1949

 

1951

 

1953 - 1954

Three items by gossip columnist Cholly Knickerbocker (the pen name of Igor Cassini)

 

1954

 

1978 - article about Gérard de Chambrier's history in aviation (sans mention of Aris Nyad)