Louis Lyon

Louis Théodore François Lyon (or Lion) was a prominent restauranteur and member of the Parisian social elite, who owned a popular restaurant on Rue Boissy-d'Anglas. During World War I, Lyon was employed by the Deuxième Bureau and was involved heavily in running guns for the French military. Lyon then entered into the French criminal underworld, becoming a prominent gangster and drug dealer in the years of Interwar France. He was a close associate of the Drug Barons of Europe, a group of brothers led by Elias Eliopoulos. In that network, he would come to be known as the Roi de la Droga, or the Drug Kingpin of Paris. The network of the Drug Barons of Europe is considered by historians to be the predecessor of the French Connection. Despite his repeated implication in trafficking operations and his reputation in contemporary accounts as a leading figure in the narcotics trade, Lyon frequently avoided prosecution, unlike many of his associates who received extensive prison sentences. He was eventually prosecuted in Paris in the trial that was known in the Parisian press as L'Affair Lyon, or the Lyon Affair.This was a trial that was covered in most of the French newspapers of the era, but he was released from prison before the Battle of France. During World War II, Lyon served in the French Resistance, arranging a resistance mission against the Abwehr II which killed Lyon's main rival, the gangster and Nazi collaborator Paul Carbone. For Lyon's actions in the French Resistance, he was awarded the Legion of Honour.

The newspaper Paris-soir writes:

"Louis Lyon is, moreover, a very strange figure in this milieu. Rich in millions, he led a peaceful existence in a bourgeois apartment on Rue de la Pompe. Never in name only in a "delicate affair," while for many he presides only over the destiny of a very Parisian restaurant, for those in the know, in the shadows, he presides over the drug trade throughout the 'Butte.' "