The Falcon 50 that was meant to fly from Punta Cana to Saint-Tropez in March 2013 with 680 kilos of cocaine on board will be auctioned off by Dominican authorities. The plane, seized during the Air Cocaine affair, has been sitting on the tarmac at Punta Cana airport for eleven years.
At the time, two French pilots, Pascal Fauret and Bruno Odos, were arrested before takeoff. They later escaped from their Dominican prison in 2015 before being tried and convicted in France. Both men have always claimed they were set up by a network.
Now the aircraft, estimated at between 500,000 and one million dollars, will go to the highest bidder. A prosaic end for a plane that made headlines and caused embarrassment all the way to the top of the French state. Former Tropezian celebrities sometimes end up in auction catalogues, even when they never actually landed in the village.
Dominican authorities have not specified the exact date of the sale. The proceeds are expected to go to the Dominican public treasury. Saint-Tropez will receive nothing, obviously. But the village's name will remain forever tied to this affair, for better or worse.
