NyadFactCheck

In search of the truth about Diana Nyad

 

 

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

29 Oct - The Misadventures of a Neuchatel Pilot in Greece / Les Mesaventures D’un Pilote Neuchatelois en Grece (La Suisse Libérale)

 

10 Dec - César Rubirosa and his Swiss secretary, Yvonne Neury, arrested for smuggling (NY Herald Tribune)

10 Dec - another version of above article (NY Daily News)

10 Dec - Rubirosa and Neury, jailed for smuggling (Minneapolis Star)

11 Dec - another version (NY Herald Tribune)

11 Dec - and another (NY Herald Tribune)

14 Dec - Rubirosa says he’ll marry Neury (NY Daily News)

16 Dec - Photo of Rubirosa and Neury (Decatur Herald)

 

1949

 

1951

 

1953 - 1954

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

27 Nov - “Mystery Man? Not Now,”

27 Dec - Aris Nyad weds Lucy Curtis Sneed

12 Jan - Followup: Aris did well for himself.

 

1954

26 Jan - Photo of César Rubirosa and his Greek wife. He never did marry Yvonne Neury. (The Indianapolis News)

27 Jan - “Hutton Has Rubirosa; Greeks Have One, Too” (Los Angeles Times)

 

21 Aug - Greeks tell César Rubirosa to leave (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

16 Sep - Rubirosa trying to get airfare (Syracuse Herald-Journal)

 

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