Major General Lê Văn Viễn (; 1904–1972), also known as Bảy Viễn ("Viễn the Seventh"), was the leader of the Bình Xuyên, a powerful Vietnamese criminal enterprise decreed by the Head of State, Bảo Đại, as an independent army within the Vietnamese National Army (Quân đội Quốc gia Việt Nam). Viễn's career trajectory was quite unique in coming from a criminal background to become a (non-Communist) leader of the Việt Minh's Zone 7, then later named a General, in charge of an auxiliary military force within the French Union, and, finally, named a General in the VNA. From 1951–55, he made arrangements with Bảo Đại, by which the Bình Xuyên was given control of their own affairs in return for their financial support of the government. In 1955, Viễn flew to Paris with the help of Savani and the Deuxième Bureau/SDECE after his unsuccessful attempt to oust the American-backed Premier, Ngô Đình Diệm. Biography Early life Lê Văn Viễn was born in Cholon in 1904 to a Chinese (Chaozhou) father and a Vietnamese mother. His father, Lê Văn Dậu, joined the Vietnamese branch of the Tiandihui when he migrated to Vietnam. Viễn was head of the Bình Xuyên and was hunted by the French in the 1930s and 1940s until he and a number of his cohorts were eventually captured and sentenced to confinement in the penal colony on Côn Sơn Island. Ba Dương, meanwhile, had become a labor broker for the Japanese and entered into a relationship with the Japanese secret service's southern Vietnamese agent, Matsushita Mitsuhiro, a pivotal clandestine operator who was undercover as the director of Dainan Koosi, and was controlled by the Japanese Consul General in Hanoi, Yoshio Minoda. Matsushita arranged for the kempeitai to free disparate Bình Xuyên personalities and component gangs from Côn Sơn in 1941. Thereafter, under Japanese patronage, the Bình Xuyên grew rapidly, both in organization and influence. Bảy Viễn escaped Côn Sơn in early 1945 and returned to Saigon, where he engaged in insurgent politics in collusion with Ba Dương and the Japanese. On 9 March 1945, the Japanese staged a coup d'état against the Vichy French administration, jailing all French police. The Bình Xuyên were given amnesty and Bảy Viễn was installed as a police official by the newly established government. From brigand to revolutionary In August 1945, the Việt Minh chief of Cochinchina, Trần Văn Giàu, formed an alliance