Thinking of yesterday's post, in which everything functions via relationships in France (and everywhere; I do think less so in the U.S. because the country is so huge and the population so mobile), and because I have an hour before I have to go out, I thought I would explain the Affaire Clearstream to you. At least, as well as I understand it myself.
Like everything else, it gets more interesting the more you find out about the personalities. All politics is personal!
Here are the main characters as of now. I don't seem to be able to put captions with them, so I will put them in a row with the names underneath. A woman is missing here, but I couldn't find a photo of her.
Left to right: Novelist Denis Robert; mathematician Imad Lahoud; [photo missing: Anne-Gabrielle Heilbronner Lahoud, budget counselor in the Foreign Office]; former Chirac cabinet director François Heilbronner; former diplomat Jean-Louis Gergorin; former secret-service General Philippe Rondot; Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin; President Jacques Chirac; Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke; Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie.
Cast of Characters
Denis Robert. Former reporter for Libération who has been researching Clearstream, a banking group in Luxembourg, since 2001.
Imad Lahoud. Mathematician specialized in banking. According to his lawyer, Lahoud also worked for the French secret service, the DGSE [General Directorate for External Security]. Lahoud's father, a Lebanese officer, worked with the father of General Philippe Rondot in Lebanon to create the Syrian and Lebanese secret services while Lebanon (then including Syria) was under French mandate. Lahoud's brother is CEO of the missile section of EADS [the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company]. Lahoud's wife is
Anne-Gabrielle Heilbronner [photo missing] who works in the Foreign Office under French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy*. [She has not been implicated in the affair.] Her father is
François Heilbronner, former assistant chief of staff for Jacques Chirac (1975-76 and 1986), CEO of a large insurance company.
Jean-Louis Gergorin, former diplomat and strategic planner for the Lagardère group, then executive Vice-President at EADS [the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company], seems to be at the heart of the Clearstream affair. He had worked together with General Rondot and with Dominique de Villepin at the Foreign Office.
General Philippe Rondot. Rondot specialized in the Middle East and was a highly praised general in the French secret service, responsible among other things for the capture of "Carlos the Jackal," the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, in the Sudan in 1994. He worked with Lahoud at the Defense Ministry until 2004. General Rondot retired in 2005.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. His great political rival, especially for the Presidency in 2007, has been Nicolas Sarkozy.
President of the Republic Jacques Chirac.
Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke. The best-known judge (with Eva Joly) investigating corruption in France.
Michèle Alliot-Marie. Minister of Defense.
..............................
It really starts long ago with the affair of the Taiwan Frigates. Six French frigates were sold to Taiwan by the French group Thomson, now Thales, in 1991 for 2.8 billion dollars. A huge amount of this money went into the pockets and secret bank accounts of various politicians of three countries-- the French first had to calm the apprehensions of the mainland Chinese. The government-subsidized Elf oil company got in on the action. [Elf is a whole 'nother story! Just as good. Or sad.] So much money was involved-- at least $500,000,000 in bribes and commissions-- that it brought down the government of Taiwan, and a number of people involved died under mysterious circumstances, including two who fell out of windows, as well as drowning (the Taiwan naval captain who planned to reveal the financial scandal) and medical "accidents."
The French judges became involved when Thomson sued to block Elf getting any of the money. Judges Van Ruymbeke and Eva Joly began to investigate in 1997. They aren't finished yet.
In June 2004, Judge Van Ruymbeke received an anonymous CD-ROM from a mysterious "corbeau," or "crow" 
(the French word for a secret malicious informer), purporting to list French holders of secret bank accounts with Clearstream in Luxembourg. The list had been falsified (apparently so carelessly that "you could see the falsification with a magnifying glass") to include the politicians Nicolas Sarkozy, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, and Alain Madelin.
This was the beginning of the second Affaire Clearstream. It appears to trace back to the visit of Imad Lahoud to Denis Robert in March 2003.
Lahoud told Robert he was researching terrorist bank accounts, and Robert handed over his files on the secret Clearstream accounts. Robert says that there were no names of politicians on those lists. Lahoud says he turned these files over to his DGSE [secret-service] operating officer.
In November, 2003, Gergorin met General Rondot to hand over a computer list of Clearstream account numbers and names. Rondot wrote, "I was astonished at the presence of politicians of the right and left, including [Michel] Rocard , Strauss-Kahn, [Laurent] Fabius." Rondot told Philippe Marland, the chief of staff of the Defense Minister, who asked him to limit his inquiry to the public employees on the list.
In January 2004, Rondot was called in by the Foreign Affairs Ministry and found himself in the office with Dominique de Villepin (then Foreign Affairs Minister) and Jean-Louis Gergorin. The three men were well acquainted. Rondot wrote that Villepin told him that President Chirac had asked Rondot to investigate the accounts. Villepin asked him to work alone, not with the secret service or the General Inspection of Services as might have been expected. At this time, Rondot began to write everything down, apparently sensing that this might protect him from trouble in the future. By February 2004, he wrote "Montage de JLG?" [Falsification by Jean-Louis Gergorin?] Rondot abbreviated "Président de la République" to PR in his notebooks, and wrote that the PR wanted him to work directly with Villepin. Rondot also was in contact with Jérôme Monod, a close friend and special counselor of Chirac, and with French army General Jean-Louis Georgelin, the President's personal army chief of staff, who works directly with Chirac.
General Rondot was obviously not comfortable about the investigation. By April 2004, he wanted to leave, according to his notebooks. He told Philippe Marland that he was thinking of an official complaint against Gergorin. By May of 2004, he told the French defense minister Michèle Alliot-Marie that he thought the listing was falsified. She is known to be friends with Nicolas Sarkozy, so one big question is, when did Sarkozy find out about this investigation? Another question is, at the point when General Rondot realized the listing was a falsification, why wasn't the investigation stopped?
It came out last month that Gergorin and a lawyer apparently met with Judge Ruymbeke at the end of April 2004, Gergorin refusing to be recorded, saying that he feared for his life. They discussed the Clearstream account listings. In June 2004 the judge received an "anonymous" CD-ROM with the falsified listings. In August 2004, the Clearstream Affair went public when the judge launched an official investigation. Meanwhile Dominique de Villepin, now Minister of the Interior, ordered an official investigation by the DST [Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, or Territorial Surveillance Directorate ] to find out who the "crow" was. These investigators were apparently not told of Rondot's investigation.
**
[Caption: Rondot: the general who knew too much... The king, who resembles Judge Van Ruymbeke, says, "Okay, that's enough for today. Tomorrow you can tell me about the Kennedy assassination and the Roswell aliens."]
In October 2004, Villepin and Sarkozy had an angry meeting over the Clearstream listings, which according to Sarkozy was the first he heard of the affair. However, according to Stéphane Denis, a journalist related to General Rondot, Sarkozy was informed by summer 2004 but waited for the right moment to attack. Sarkozy denies this.
In January 2006, now himself Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy ordered the head of the DST to find the "crow." He said the implication that he had secret bank accounts abroad had infuriated him. He told some UMP delegates that he wanted to hang those who did this "on a butcher's hook." ["un croc de boucher"] He decided to start a court case.
In April 2006, the Clearstream affair really blew up. Judges Jean-Marie d'Huy and Henri Pons began investigating. They sub-poenaed [perquisitionner-- I think that's the right translation] the DGSE [secret service], the office of the Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, and General Rondot, and found piles of archives. They discovered General Rondot's secret investigation and he went public. Jean-Louis Gergorin (who still maintains his innocence) left EADS.
À suivre.... [to be continued]
"Si nous apparaissons, le PR et moi, nous sautons. If we appear, the PR and I, we'll be finished." --Villepin to Rondot in 2004 [Rondot's notebooks, which came to light in April 2006]
"Tous pourris." They're all rotten. --Average Jeau's reaction to the Affaire Clearstream.
* A cardiologist from Lourdes who does not speak any foreign language, and who is famous for his gaffes confusing Taiwan with Thailand, Slovakia with Slovenia, Croatia and Kosovo; who thought the French overseas territory Antilles was a foreign country; who was surprised no Jews were deported from England during World War II; and told Condoleezza Rice to call back because he was alone at the time. He has not been implicated in the Clearstream Affair.
**With many thanks to Placide for the use of his cartoon.
Interesting how impossible it often is to tell which politicians are lying and which are telling the truth, and the more complex it gets the more difficult it is to keep track of the cast of characters. I happened to watch the film "All the President's Men" (about Watergate) last night, and there were so many people involved in THAT scandal, it was hard to keep up.
I wonder if there will ever come a time when government officials and corporate leaders will actually act from a place of integrity and desire to serve the people rather than acting out of greed and a desire for power and to serve their own best interests.
Posted by: The Bold Soul | 14 May 2006 at 18:45
Hilarious.
Unfortunately for the French, they have no experienced politicians who are not part of the same pathetic 'combine'. And so France's inevitable decline continues. It's a national debacle.
Italy's thoroughly corrupt cold-war political class held on until several years ago; the French equivalent has so far proved more tenacious. Good luck to the French as they attempt to rid themselves of this extended family of Enarque mutual backscratchers! It won't be easy.
Posted by: ZF | 14 May 2006 at 19:34
Wow, this sounds like something from the States-Watergate, JFK assassination, etc. I guess it is true that power corrupts-as does the chance for big money.
Posted by: Linda | 15 May 2006 at 08:28
Hi !
Bravo, Chère Sedulia ! Aborder tout ceci n'est pas une mince affaire et vous vous acquittez avec les honneurs !
Now Amerloque will not have to spend even more time reading the papers about this ... (wide smile) ! Merci !!!
Nary a mention of the Pasqua crowd in the mainstream press, though ... or has Amerloque missed one ?!
Best,
L'Amerloque
From Sedulia:
Well, I certainly don't claim any special knowledge and as far as I know I'm not on the list either!
Posted by: L'Amerloque | 15 May 2006 at 18:11