Saudi Prince Accused of Drug Smuggling Avoids Prosecution

"I think that we got what we could get out of the Saudi Arabian government at this time," Raffanello said, though he added that it was not enough, given what he called the prince's key role in the plot.

"He is the key co-conspirator," Raffanello said. "He's the straw that stirs the drink. He made it happen. No plane, no dope. Dope stays in Colombia."

A Diplomatic Incident?

The prince, for his part, has declared his innocence in a Saudi newspaper, saying that he was bringing in plastic piping, not cocaine. The prince, however, has a prior drug charge, having been indicted in Mississippi on narcotics charges in 1984.

Authorities say the value of the smuggled cocaine was $36 million and that some of the drug money was moved through a Swiss bank in Geneva that was owned by the prince himself.

Police in France say that the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, even threatened to cancel a $6 billion contract with a French company over the case. The details of the alleged threat were sent in a diplomatic cable from the French ambassador in Riyadh.

A former French narcotics officer, Fabrice Monti, said this case has become the center of a diplomatic incident. "The Saudi government acted as one to set up a protective barrier between the prince and French justice and threatened to not sign a very important and lucrative contract in the works for a very long time," he said.

Raffanello said that in all his years, he's never seen a case like this before. "We've been doing dope investigations for years. We don't do many princes," he said. "It was kind of a shocker."