Public service! My translation of today's exclusive interview with Jean-Louis Gergorin, the "crow" in the Affaire Clearstream. Some rather astonishing stuff.
Interview with Jean-Louis Gergorin by Laurent Valdiguié of Le Parisien, read and amended afterwards by Jean-Louis Gergorin "in the Luxembourg gardens."
1. “Clearstream shelters some pretty curious bank accounts.”
How did this Clearstream affair, where you are one of the main personalities, get started?
Jean-Louis Gergorin: Before I start, I would like to explain how Clearstream works. I have been doing my own investigation for three years now, and you have to begin at the beginning to understand the rest. Clearstream, which was then called Cedel, was created in the 1960s. At the time money, in the form of bank titles, physically traveled between banks around the world. The banks agreed that it would be better to “compensate” their financial movements by creating a structure that would take care of the transfers. For example, instead of making 100 million travel from one bank to a second, then 300 million from the second back to the first, the structure would transfer electronically only the balance, 200 million, from one bank to the other. It’s simple. Two structures in the world do this today. Clearstream in Luxembourg, and Euroclear in Belgium.
How do these two groups work?
What leaps out is that the Clearstream system is not supervised much. The regulatory authorities, especially the Banque centrale luxembourgeoise, don’t have much power. Banking secrecy in Luxembourg is very protected. Over the years, that gave a certain number of people ideas.
Clearstream, however, repeats that no individual can have an account with them!
That is not exact. Clearstream and Euroclear have client accounts that are not financial establishments, individuals or companies. In fact, these accounts are opened by financial establishments that serve as name-lenders to their clients. At Christmas 2004, I was able to obtain the manual for users of Clearstream, which is inaccessible today. Clearstream, according to my information, has between 5000 and 10,000 accounts for individuals. The opening of these accounts obeys some curious logic. To start with, the client accounts in Clearstream’s numbering have a number, or a name without a number, or a name and a number, or even nothing at all. It is all completely opaque. If you want to open one of these accounts and be part of the system, you need, I was told, an entry ticket of 20 million euros.
But why would you want an account with Clearstream rather than an account in a bank hidden in some fiscal haven?
With the Clearstream system, you can, with codes, from anywhere in the world, and in real time, make transfers of cash or of titles instantly. Afterwards you can send your “bank statements” to anyone…so that no one, not even your initial bank, knows who is hidden behind the transfers. Fiscally, no tax agent in the entire world can suspect your existence. And, in case a judge should raid, he would find nothing. The real number of the digital bank account that served to open the Clearstream account appears only once, at the moment it is opened….
How did you find out about all this and when?
At the end of 2002, some information from a “human” source told me that there was a personage, based in Switzerland, whom I have designated with the initials of K.S., who was doing industrial spying against the group Lagardère. I was told that this person, who was formerly in the arms business, was interested in Arnaud Lagardère, the son of Jean-Luc, and in missile sales to Iran. I did not pursue that trail at the time.
2. “At the death of Jean-Luc Lagardère I asked myself some questions.”
What happened then?
In Spring 2003, Jean-Luc Lagardère died suddenly. The 14th of March. I began to wonder right away.
You think he was murdered?
I never said that. Jean-Luc died, according to the judicial inquest, of a “rare auto-immune disease,” more precisely of an “acute hemorrhagic encephalitis.” It’s an extremely unusual disease that usually strikes men younger than 35, who have warning symptoms. Jean-Luc was 75 and had had no symptoms. Investigating a little, I discovered that this illness could be provoked artificially in animals under the name of EAE (experimental auto-immune encephalitis). It’s a sort of rapidly spreading multiple sclerosis that they inoculate in lab animals with a product called l’adjuvant de Freund. I also know that in parallel fashion the Russian secret service developed in the middle of the 1990s a militarized method that allows this illness to be transmitted to humans, which they tested in an aerosol form. I do not say that Jean-Luc was murdered. I simply say that it is legitimate to ask the question.
What did you do then?
I had the idea of trying to see if there had been any unusual movements of Lagardère stock in the weeks before he died. That is how I met my “source,” who is someone who works in the area of the finances of international terrorism.
One thinks of Imad Lahoud, a computer expert who has done a study for the DGSE [French secret service] on the subject….
I did not say that. I do not say either if “my source” is one or several people. I do not wish to compromise the source. The source has taken considerable risks. It is simple: my source is convinced that if it reveals that it penetrated the Clearstream accounts, its life would be limited….To reveal this penetration, which is still fiercely denied by Clearstream to this day, could have gigantic consequences.
What did you learn from this source then in getting access to the Clearstream accounts?
The source identified major purchases of Lagardère stock…Rather quickly there were transactions including a majority of foreigners and some non-political personalities, notably some names in French industry. The second thing that astounded me was seeing the name of K.S. reappear, who had appeared in another area in 2002. For me that was a sort of turning point….
3. “The affair became explosive…I alerted the authorities.”
Did your source give you the listing?
When I came back from vacation in 2003, my source told me that it had developed software. Thanks to this software, starting with two accounts, one attributed to a French industrial magnate and one attributed to Andrew Wang, the intermediary who has been implicated in the affair of the Taiwan frigates, it was possible to go back into other accounts in the heart of Clearstream. So I obtained a list of 70 accounts with their dates of opening the account. This list was a bizarre mixture in which there appeaed names of officials, but also of three politicians: Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and Alain Madelin. [Note from the editor: It has been formally legally established that none of these politicians have ever had an account with Clearstream.] Nicolas Sarkozy was not on the list, but there were three names of Russian billionaires, Mafia names….Immediately, I took the initiative of warning the authorities….It’s explosive. Besides, there are other names, notably two of whom I know nothing about even now. It seemed to me, obviously, that all this needed to be verified by an official service.
Who did you go see?
My own authority was from the Defense Ministry. I told myself that, given the implications that were in play, it should be military personnel who investigated….I had known Philippe Rondot for a long time [Note from the editor: the spy charged with the coordination of the secret services and the Ministry of Defense.], so I went to see him in November 2003.
How did he react?
He had never heard of Clearstream. I had not either, by the way. I had not then read the book by Denis Robert [Note from the editor: the journalist and novelist who wrote an investigation of Clearstream.]. I specify that at the time, as vice-president of EADS [the European Aeronautic Defense and Space company], this affair took only about one percent of my time….I thought that Rondot would bring in some major technical power to the investigation, especially the technical services of the DGSE [Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French secret service in charge of external security] and that he would progress quickly.
Did he know your secret source?
Of course, I told him everything. I also knew the way Rondot worked, I knew that he was a loner, but I also knew that he was legitimate. I knew he would tell everything to the Defense Minister. That’s normal.
4. “Nothing was happening, so I took the initiative to go see Villepin.”
How did Dominique de Villepin come into this?
At the beginning of 2004, I met him accidentally. In fact, on the first of January 2004, while I was organizing a lunch with Henry Kissinger, I decided to go see Dominique at the Foreign Ministry. Without being good friends, we have known each other since we worked together at the Quai d’Orsay between 1981 and 1984 [Note from the editor: Jean-Louis Gergorin was the hierarchical superior of Dominique de Villepin in the Centre d’étude et de prevision.]. Once I was in his office, face to face, I told him everything I had been worrying about in this affair. He was interested and he shared my feeling that obviously more should be put into this investigation.
Therefore the famous meeting of three on 9th January 2004 at the Quai d’Orsay….
Yes. On that day, I was asked to come. Rondot seemed rather furious at discovering that I had spoken to Villepin.
Was there any mention of Nicolas Sarkozy?
My own preoccupation that day was to understand the technical mechanism of the system. They were not very interested in all that….They were more interested in the people. Sarkozy was not on the list that I took out of my pocket, which was the list of 70 accounts. In my memory, we talked about Nicolas Sarkozy that day because he was supposed to go to India, a trip which seemed surprising for a Minister of the Interior….
Was there any mention, as Rondot declares, of Fabius and of Rocard?
Never! I believe Rondot mixed them up … with Strauss-Kahn and Chevènement. As for Patrick Ollier [Note from the editor: the companion of Michèle Alliot-Marie, Minister of Defense], he was on no list. During the meeting, Dominique de Villepin gave Rondot the order to increase the means of the investigation. I know nothing about any possible role of the Elysée [the President, Jacques Chirac].
What additional means were put to work?
In fact none. Rondot, contrary to what he seems to be saying, did not tell me about his growing “doubts.” He indicated to me several times that he was convinced by certain aspects and did not understand certain others. In fact, he lunched with people who are cited on the list and came back convinced that they weren’t part of it.
Did you speak of it again with the current Prime Minister?
I spoke to him about it briefly when I was decorated in April 2004. He sent me back to Rondot.
5. “The name of Sarkozy appeared on a second list.”
When did the name of Nicolas Sarkozy appear?
In April, the source produced a complete directory of Clearstream with 33,000 names. That is when the famous accounts of Nagy and Bocsa appeared [Note from the editor: Hiding the complete identity of Nicolas Sarkozy de Nagy Bocsa.]. I saw this list in passing. The source gave it to Rondot. On this list also appeared a series of people from the Lagardère group that surprised me a great deal….At the same moment, the source pulled out 8000 transactions from Clearstream just for the month of March. That represented 200 pages of bank transactions that were given to Rondot.
Didn’t you begin to doubt in the face of this avalanche of “specifics”?
As much as I admit that a directory can be falsified, all the same 8000 bank transactions would be a huge amount of work. At the time, to tell you the truth, all that seemed super-serious to me.
It was then that you decided to go see Judge Van Ruymbeke?
There was another reason, which I will explain to the judges, and which is linked to a specific threat to the Lagardère group that appears in certain transactions. In fact, I told myself that Rondot was not going to get it done, that at this rate he’d still be working in ten years. I took the initiative alone to go see the judge.
6. “I told Rondot about seeing Van Ruymbeke.”
Did you talk to Van Ruymbeke about the Rondot investigation?
Not directly. But I did not hide from the judge that this information was due to a penetration of Clearstream linked to a secret service. I listed to him the 70 bank accounts with the names of politicians, Madelin, Chevènement and Strauss-Kahn, without bringing up the next directory which included the name of Sarkozy. After I had declined Van Ruymbeke’s proposition to testify formally, for reasons which I will explain to the judges, it was agreed that a summary of my information would be given to him. That produced the letter of May 4th, the first one….
The letter you claim to have written, so that you are the "corbeau"?
A corbeau is an anonymous denouncer acting in bad faith. Going to see the judge, I was not anonymous! I will explain myself before the judges about the writing of this letter.
In the second letter, of June 13th, with this time the names of politicians, including that of Sarkozy, that was you?
Concerning all the letters that followed, I reserve my information and analyses for the judges.
Who did you tell about your visit to Van Ruymbeke?
I told Rondot afterwards.
Who did he tell?
Knowing him, I think he told his superiors. [“je pense qu’il a rendu compte.”]
To hear you, one has the feeling that Van Ruymbeke did not investigate thoroughly either….
Yes he did. He investigated thoroughly but he ran up against the coding of the bank references of the initial accounts that served to open the Clearstream accounts. As everyone knows, a “discreet” bank will not reveal a numbered bank account unless the questioner is precise enough not to give it any way out.
Don’t you have the impression that you manipulated the judicial system, or perhaps were yourself manipulated?
It would be convenient for a lot of people, all over, to make everyone believe that. Certainly I have made mistakes, and completely underestimated the complexity of the financial mechanisms we are talking about. I remain convinced that at least the initial base of my information has a strong probability of being reliable, and that major verifications need to be done on this system.
--In Le Parisien, Thursday, 18 May 2006
Recent Comments
shitpoop capital of the world