Les affaires d’État n’ont qu’un seul intérêt : mettre à nu les mécanismes du pouvoir. Clearstream est de celles-là. 👋 + de documentaires histoire 👉 http://bit.ly/3lqyFpY 🙏 Abonnez vous !
00:00 Au commencement le troisième homme
52:07 Clearstream, la banque des banques
Ce documentaire est le fruit d’une longue enquête. Construits comme un thriller, il propose une plongée dans le monde fermé de la grande finance, au centre du lobby militaro-industriel, au coeur du pouvoir exécutif ou dans le secret de la magistrature. Là où d’ordinaire seuls sont admis les puissants.
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Ce documentaire a été réalisé à des fins pédagogiques et peut contenir des images qui peuvent heurter la sensibilité de certaines personnes. Si vous êtes une personne sensible, le visionnage de ce documentaire vous est déconseillé.
“Manipulation, une histoire française” – Episode 1 et 2
Une collection documentaire écrite par Christophe Nick, Vanessa Ratignier et Pierre Péan
Réalisé par Jean-Robert Viallet
Une production YAMI2
Diffusion: 2011
#Clearstream #DocumentaireHistoire #AffairesDEtat #Manipulations #PolitiqueFrançaise #FinanceSecrète #Espionnage #notrehistoire #politique
The story I am going to tell you
takes place in the world of the powerful. A world populated by big bankers,
ministers, secret agents, arms dealers,
dubious middlemen, judges, opinionated people
and overly curious journalists. It is a story that lays bare
the secret mechanisms inherent in the exercise of power. It’s a rare story. The world of the powerful only shows us
what it wants to show. The corridors of power
are forbidden to us. We are never invited there. Except
when a disruption of the theme system, a crack, tears the fortress
of the secrets of the Republic apart. This is where I will take you,
into a nebula of which you have seen only the flames, the Front Stage,
a court transformed into an arena. September 21, 2009 should have
been an ordinary day. But
it opens with a circus that shakes political circles,
raises the adrenaline of legal commentators and, everywhere, fuels rumors and barroom discussions. The trial of the year will
begin in just over an hour at the Paris courthouse,
the one in the murky Clearstream affair, with the defendants including
a former Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin,
and four suspects accused of plotting against Nicolas Sarkozy before
the presidential election. The head of state himself is a
civil party in this trial, which will last a month. It all began in 2004. Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke
received a list of alleged secret account holders
at the Luxembourg bank Clearstream from a mysterious raven. A Luxembourg bank that lists
individuals suspected of hiding money from secret commissions abroad
includes Nicolas Sarkozy’s name. In the greatest secrecy,
Dominique de Villepin is conducting several investigations into these listings. In fact, these listings are fake,
but no one is trying to stop the manipulation. This is what
Dominique de Villepin is being accused of today. The investigation quickly turned
to Imad Lahoud, a computer scientist suspected
of having forged the false document. I am not the falsifier. I didn’t add the names. That is the business of Gergorin,
Rondot and the others. This is so crazy.
There is nothing. I am here by the will of a man. I am here because of the determination of one man,
Nicolas Sarkozy. Who is also President of
the French Republic. I will come out free and clear. A few rounds of applause break out. The man suspected of complicity in
slanderous denunciations has launched his defense.
It will be political. Nicolas Sarkozy
is on the plane, flying to New York. Far from this judicial turmoil,
a young journalist, Vanessa Ratignier, spent months exploring everything
related to our history. A laborious job. 80,000 pieces of instructions to examine,
dozens of interviews to launch, 20 years of history to reconstruct. I’m calling because I’m
investigating the Clearstream affair. I read your book, I would have really
liked to be able to talk about it together. In your opinion, I would have really liked us to be
able to talk about it together. After months, his work
intersects with that of a man who has spent his life investigating the corridors of power. Pierre Péan has 30
investigative books behind him. Books he wrote in his cabin,
far from the hustle and bustle of Paris. Her network of informants and her
experience will allow the journalist to navigate this labyrinth. It’s true that on these lists,
we have the biggest industrialists, we have politicians from all sides,
we have big personalities, lawyers, media men,
we have intelligence men, we have international personalities,
Russian mafia or at least supposed ones, finally. I believe that if there had not been
a clash between Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin, I
believe that the affair would not have reached this scale at all. Besides, it is interesting to see
what makes a matter become a matter of state. Every day,
there are dysfunctions in the state apparatus and certain
dysfunctions attract journalists,
attract the political class and that makes the front pages and the front pages and the front pages. It’s still a
completely mysterious alchemy. Ultimately, when we go into these
listings and look at the different names that are cited,
it really allows us to penetrate all the places of power.
Absolutely. The Clearstream trial ended
as it had begun with a statement from Dominique de Villepin. Nicolas Sarkozy had promised to hang me from a bite of a hook. I see the promise has been kept. The prosecutor is calling for an 18-month
suspended prison sentence for Dominique de Villepin. What will we remember from these
five weeks of hearings? Prison sentences have been
requested against Jean-Louis Gergorin. I am not the character
described in this judgment. I believed in the authenticity of the
Clairetrip listings transmitted in 2003 and 2004. Imad Lahoud was sentenced
to three years, including 18 months in prison. Imad Lahoud, whose involvement in
the plot is hardly in doubt. It’s often like that
with major trials. They serve to state the law,
not always to establish the truth. There is nothing about Clearstream,
finance and tax havens, nothing about arms contracts,
black money, commissions and kickbacks,
nothing about the gray areas of a system at the heart of which these men killed each other. Just this smell of hatred
between individuals of the same world. Yet this case is fascinating. Let’s start the whole story from the beginning. Seven years before the trial, one morning in October 2002, a stranger left prison. This Clearstream affair
began for me on October 7, 2002. It is an important date
for me for two reasons. First of all, I’m 35 years old today. And above all, I left
the health remand center at 1:15 p.m. where I was in pre-trial detention in
a case that has still not been judged. So it’s been 11 years now. I’m going out, I have no
money, I’m alone. My wife comes to pick me
up from the prison. It was Monday,
October 7, 2002. At that time, no one
yet knew the name Imad Lahoud. Born into a family of
Lebanese Christian soldiers, Imad Lahoud took refuge in France at the age of 14 to escape
the civil war ravaging his country. Welcomed in the beautiful
Parisian neighborhoods, Imad Lahoud frequents the best establishments. He is a gifted student. He obtained two DEAs,
one in solid-state physics, the other in probability and random processes. This course earned him a job
at Merrill Lynch bank. In London, the City is fond of
French mathematicians. The first Imad Lahoud, reveals himself in
Eric Rochand’s documentary Trader. A trader is a gambler. He is someone who bets on
scenarios. Personally,
from my experience in London, having
worked in the City for almost four years,
I believe that banks employ punters. In the life of a trader, there are
two approaches. The first is to look for the trade that
will make you famous. That’s one approach. There is a second approach
which is to say: I must avoid the trade which will put me on the mat. They are the traders. They play millions,
but above all they play. In this story,
we must keep in mind that the pleasure of the game is
a characteristic deeply rooted in the personality of Imad Lahoud. After four years in London,
Lahoud has money and drives a Ferrari. He returns to Paris to join his wife. Anne-Gabrielle Heilbronner is a graduate of the ENA (National School of Administration) and
Inspector General of Finance. She is a girl from a good family. His father, François Heilbronner,
was one of the influential men in French finance. Former chief of staff of the young Minister
of Agriculture Jacques Chirac in 1972, he was
his deputy chief of staff at Matignon in 1975 and then in 1986. In gratitude for his loyal
service to the Chirac clan, François Heilbronner will take over as chairman
of the insurance giant, the Gane group. In 1996,
Imad Lahoud, soon to be a father, left the City to return to Paris
and join the Heilbronners. I just came back from London. It was a childhood dream, so I worked hard in London. And then I sold it. You see, it still has
English registration. And I sold it because
it was unbearable. With a child, you can’t do anything. And then it costs so
much to maintain that… It’s part of the myth,
it’s part of London life. Those were years when we
earned a good living. Within his in-laws,
the former trader gains momentum, changes costume and becomes
the second Imad Lahoud. In 1997,
he brought his father-in-law on board to create a very high-risk hedge fund,
the Voltaire Fund. 40 million euros housed
in a tax haven, the British Virgin Islands , and managed by H.
L. Gestion. H as in Al Brunner, L as in Lahoud. The father-in-law reassures the presidency,
Lahoud the management. The stature of the senior official
reassures investors. Ganne, Fortis, like AGF,
he injects millions. From the moment he actually sets up
a fund, he will have no difficulty because he
is sponsored, because on his front,
it is not Lahoud that we see, it is El Brunner and Chirac. Chirac’s former chief of staff
at Matignon, the former president of Ganne, a respected figure in the field. We see Chirac. We see the highest power.
He trusts her. So. In fact, we trust him. But in the summer of 2000,
after three years of existence, the Voltaire fund suffered
losses of tens of millions. During the Nasdaq crisis,
which began around February 2000, the fund went bankrupt, as
it was a leveraged fund. And then, suddenly,
the fund was closed and not much happened until June 2002. So, there was a magistrate called
Isabelle Prévost-des faits, who questioned me at the financial division,
charged me and threw me in prison. So, in June 2002,
you found yourself in prison because the investment fund
you set up… There you go, went bankrupt and I was accused of having defrauded investors because I didn’t tell them that the
investments were risky, etc. There were five investors,
all of them great professionals. There is one that has
since disappeared, it is Fortis. He disappeared because he made
bad investments elsewhere. He lost 3 million euros with me,
but he must have lost several billion by making mistakes on
what caused the crisis. On subprimes?
Yes, on subprimes, absolutely. Brief. I’ve met some swindlers,
some big swindlers, some big smoke-blowers, but I think that at
this level, the journalist is completely
helpless when faced with a guy like that. And you have to be extraordinarily
careful because, by definition, he always understands what you are looking for. And so, he will quickly understand how to pin you to the ground by throwing things at you that are credible
in your own universe. Lahoud justifies the bankruptcy by the
Nasdaq crisis, a version contradicted by the investigation file. The
various indictments allege forgery and use of forgery, receiving stolen goods,
aggravated breach of trust, and organized fraud. François Heilbronner
and Imad Lahoud are indicted. Stepfather escapes prison. Imad, himself, is placed in
provisional detention at La Santé. 108 days during which Imad will put on his
third costume, that of the ex-convict. As of October 2011, the case has
still not been decided. We won’t go into detail,
but $43 million is going up in smoke.
42. $42 million gone. Theoretically, someone
who is not patronized like that, their life is completely cooked. There is no question of bouncing back,
at least not for a long time and not in the same country. He spent a few weeks in prison. His wife didn’t let him go,
his environment didn’t let him go. He can come back. What I mean
is, a guy like that, if he wasn’t in this family, if he didn’t have
his patronages, he’s a cooked guy. No, he’s not a cooked guy. And the image of Ellebraunner-Chirac
is stronger than that of a crook. With the indictment
in the Voltaire case, Imad Lahoud has carbonized his father-in-law. François Heilbronner
was then retired. Imad Lahoud, for his part, still has a future
to build and dreams of power. He will now use his older brother
Marwan, who is the child prodigy of the family. A polytechnician
who was only 23 years old when he joined the very closed circle of arms. On October 7, 2002, I left
the Santé remand center at 1:15 p.m. And the first thing I do is
call my brother Marwan, who at the time was assistant
to Jean-Louis Jacques Gorin, himself executive vice-president of EADS. So I call Marwan and
say, I just got out. I would like to see you.
I have no money. Help me.
How am I going to get out of this? It’s Monday.
It was Monday, October 7, 2002. And I saw him on Tuesday, the next day,
he invited me to lunch at EADS, so to the mess hall, on the seventh floor,
the management canteen. The seventh floor of ADS is an
ultra-private place where the big bosses eat lunch. Those of Airbus, Eurocopter, the air, the air war. This is where the strategists,
decision-makers and shareholders of the World’s Second-Largest Defense
and Aeronautics Group, Europe’s most prestigious industrial showcase
, which was worth 30 billion euros per year, met. Among the leaders of the DS,
Marwan Lahoud, IMAD’s providential big brother,
the one who will allow him to meet the other main character of our
story, Jean-Louis Gergorin. I am not the character
described in this judgment. I believed in the authenticity of the
Clairetree listings or those transmitted in 2003 and 2004. The man who is the main accused
in the case had succeeded in everything until then. Considered a brilliant mind and
strategist for the EADS group, Jean-Louis Gergorin has been
at the highest level of power since the age of 27. Familiar with leading politicians,
secret service chiefs and the most prominent journalists. Here, I have some things for you. I had followed the
Clearstream affair without understanding anything. On the other hand, the only thing I was
pretty sure of was that Gergorin, the role he was given
was not the right one. I had the image
of someone who was really very public service, a kind of soldier-monk,
with the flag, with all that, and what he was made to play,
then with great morals, a republican ethic. And so, the role attributed to him
in the trial did not suit me at all. What did he have to do? Him, to bring down Sarko, to bring
down I don’t know who. So it didn’t fit. And so, from that
moment on, I tried to meet him, but without knowing where I was going. At first, I listened to it for several hours without knowing. When did you
first hear about Imad Lahoud? The first time I heard about
a brother of Marwan was shortly after
September 11, 2001. We talk about September 11, which is
obviously something that is extremely important for us,
both as citizens, but also as managers of EADS,
because it had dramatic consequences
on air traffic, on society. He said to me: You know that I have
a brother who is a financier. And according to him, there was
insider trading that preceded 9/11. It struck me, I found it interesting. And then, I still had
10,000 other worries on my mind. He doesn’t talk to me about this brother anymore,
he didn’t even say his first name. And in June 2002,
Marwan, who is my main deputy,
whom I see every day, he comes into my office completely defeated
, completely defeated, and he says to me: My brother is in prison. I said to him: Wait, your brother who? And all this, and he tells me:
He doesn’t tell me that his brother is dishonest, nor that he is honest,
but the feeling is that his brother… He gives the feeling that his brother is
a very bright guy, a little bit reckless.
Above all, he is devastated. So I try to comfort him. Then at the beginning of October,
I see Marwan in the morning. He said to me: Very good news,
my brother was released yesterday. He said to me: He’s coming for
lunch later. It would be great if you
could come by eventually. He wants to rehabilitate himself. He knows things about
Al Qaeda’s funding. I remembered afterward,
not at the time of the insider trading story , I had asked Marwan who
said to me: Yes, it was indeed him I was referring to. For me, it’s a gesture of friendship, it’s
normal that he asks me to come by and meet
his brother, I’m going to do it. We have an excellent relationship with Marwan. Marwan was at the time responsible for
mergers and acquisitions at EADS, working in the
Strategy and Coordination department headed by Jean-Louis Gergorin. And so, he was an assistant to Jean-Louis
Gergorin for four or five years. 24 hours after his release from prison,
Imad Lahoud was introduced to Jean-Louis Gergorin,
one of the most influential men in the European defense and aeronautics industry. I find them both. They introduce me to Imad. Imad, I find a boy, obviously, who
still seems tired. You can tell he hadn’t just spent
three months on the Riviera, but he was lively, extraordinarily
friendly, and very shy. Before asking him about this
Al Qaeda business or what could help with
Islamic financing, I said to him: Explain your business to me. His story was very convincing,
that he obviously hadn’t stolen a penny, but that on the other hand,
he had been reckless in putting all his eggs in one basket,
which was the basket of Internet stocks. Hence the fact that investors
had lost everything. Basically, it was an explanation
that revolved around that, but it’s not so much the
technical detail of that explanation. Also, I wasn’t competent,
but that’s the character. I found it touching and convincing. He immediately told me: Give me
your CV, I will help you. At the time,
I had absolutely no idea what Jean-Louis Gergorin had done in his life. I didn’t know what
the CAP was. I didn’t know that he knew
Dominique de Villepin, that he knew Philippe Rondot,
that he was someone who came out of the Cold War completely wrecked, etc. Jean-Louis Gergorin is what is called
a senior civil servant, one of those who advises presidents and ministers. A graduate of the ENA (National School of Administration), a major at the Polytechnique,
the man is reliable, perfectly efficient, and totally dedicated. From the maintenance staff to the Chief
State Clerk, self-conditioning or natural attitude, one has the impression that everything here
is done with calm, reflection and balance. In 1973, he participated in the creation of a
prospective structure within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
bringing together the elite of diplomats, academics,
but also special services. It is called the CAP,
Center for Analysis and Forecasting. His goal? Study the major global geopolitical issues
to better anticipate France’s positions. We contribute to the thinking and
development of foreign policy. I believe that it is important,
in order not to mix genres and to give ourselves a
certain independence from past or current policies,
not to take on the task of negotiation at the same time. We have no interest, I would say,
in prestige or in institution, in defending a policy which is the very one
we are responsible for implementing. I think it gives us
much greater independence. And also, I think it’s important
that we are somewhat redundant to the rest of the
department, precisely to provide independent insight to the minister. The presidents change
and Jean-Louis Gergorin takes the helm of the CAP. Under Pompidou, Giscard, then Mitterrand,
he strengthened his powers and influence. Over the years,
he surrounded himself with a budding elite, including two men who are
also at the heart of our history. A young graduate of the ENA,
Dominique de Villepin, and an intelligence officer, Philippe Rondot. They are 30 years old,
they have barely left school. And then, it’s a moment that is
very important in a career. The connections you make at that
moment are fundamental. This is a very revolutionary thing that has
been done compared to classical diplomacy. These 30-year-olds are better
known than the old diplomats who are 50. There is a tradition at the Quai d’Orsay:
always be wary of the secret services. Classic ambassadors
pretended not to read the dispatches because a diplomat doesn’t stoop to that
level, whereas guys like Jean-Louis Gergorin will use
every possibility, will establish links with the secret services. So, the CAP is something
totally original in the apparatus of the French state. In 1984, Jean-Louis Gergorin
decided to leave the CAP. He knows that the future is being built
on a European scale, in this grey area that is the defence industry. He found his place in
Jean-Luc Lagardère’s group, Matra, the missile manufacturer. The arrival of missiles has undoubtedly
revolutionized everything, because missiles are
increasingly concentrated, condensed. They’re small, you mean? They are small and they allow
the aircraft to first ensure what is called air superiority. No modern war, I believe, has
been or can be won without hating those who hold
air superiority. At a French stand,
missiles are offered in yellow, red or blue at the same price. It was a real life-changing experience
because GT, the Asian Forecasting Center, had,
Pierre, as you know well, a certain media success. So, indeed,
when I left for Matra, I remember that Jacques Amalric wrote a
little piece, a little article in Le Monde, about the role I had played, etc. I was somewhat in the environment
of people who mattered in foreign policy, defense doctrine, etc. And there, I really completely immersed myself for quite a few years, if you like,
immersed myself in the industry. When Imad Lahoud met the former
diplomat who had become the strategist of the EADS group, he knew perfectly well that he was
facing a man who was fully aware of his power. The former trader is playing
his destiny that day. He gave me a big performance:
I want to rehabilitate myself. I made mistakes,
but mistakes, not dishonesty. I want to serve my country.
I always remember that. France is my country.
I want to serve my country. He said that with great force. I want to serve my country.
I still remember that sentence. And so, in a rather elliptical way,
he told me that he managed Bin Laden’s accounts in the 1990s,
but that he didn’t really know who to contact in the services. Is this DST? Is this the DGSE, he said to me. And who can introduce it? And Marwan told us again: But that’s why we
wanted to ask your opinion, because you know these people a little
, etc. One of the biggest clients of the bank
I worked for, which was the American bank
Merrill Lynch, was the Bin Laden family,
which is an extremely honorable family. When you take out the singular element that you
know, Bin Laden, from the family, it is an extremely
honorable family in Saudi Arabia. They are entrepreneurs,
they have several types of activities, including a financial activity that manages
the family pension fund. And this pension fund, in fact,
was one of my clients. And so, Jean-Louis Gergorin’s idea
was to work between the DST and the DGSE to enlighten them on the
financial mechanisms of this family. And so there it is, it is Jean-Louis Gergorin who takes
me along and makes an appointment with General Rondot
for the first time. In this post-9/11 period, as intelligence agencies around the world
hunt for the greatest terrorist in history, Lahoud’s promise
makes him an important man. After using his brother Marwan,
seducing Jean-Louis Gergorin, he will meet General Rondot,
the one nicknamed the French master spy. In nearly 40 years in the
intelligence services, General Rondot built his legend
in the secret notebooks of the Republic, from Bucharest to Washington,
from Khartoum to Kabul, from Paris to Beirut, from Baghdad to Moscow. With the explosion of the Clearstream affair,
we discover the blood-red face of the 70-year-old divisional general, from Saint-Cyr, a
former paratrooper and doctor of sociology. Rondot has an extraordinary profile. He is first… He is an intellectual
who then joins a secret service, but in the action service. So, an intellectual action, already.
Action is operations. Special operations. The Action service
is the armed wing of the DGSE, which itself, the DGSE, is
roughly the armed wing of France. When necessary, there are
special operations that go beyond apparent legality to include
destabilizing a country, killing a head of state, and stealing documents. The action service is the illegal
legitimized by the reason of State. General Rondot joined
the special services in 1965. He is an officer in the action service of the SDEC,
the ancestor of the French foreign intelligence services. Head of station in Romania,
in 1975, the services lost sight of him for three days,
while he had to report his schedule hour by hour. He is suspected of having been turned
by security and is being questioned. He has nothing to justify himself with.
He has been discharged from the special services. Since then, he has recorded everything he
does in secret notebooks. Notebooks that will become the
centerpiece of the Clearstream trial. He is suspected of treason and expelled from the SDEC. He will be recovered,
and this is very important to understand the friendship between Gergorin and Rondot,
he will be recovered by the CAP by Jean-Louis Gergorin. Gergorin will participate in a new
investigation to say that all the accusations
against Rondot were false. Hence the strong link
between Gergorin and Rondot. It so happens that in February 1979,
I became the head of the Centre for Forecasting Analysis
at the Quai d’Orsay and I thought that Rondot could be
an interesting recruit in the Arab-Islamic world where he clearly had
considerable expertise. So, I recruited him.
We are quite close. He is part of my team, and
at the same time different names of people are part of it,
not Dominique de Villepin, by the way. The mayonnaise is very good. And finally, Philippe Rondot met Yves Bonnet, director of the DST, whom I also knew, who
asked him if he could work part-time for the DST. So, he will then have
a career alongside the DST. It has never been seen before. Someone who was
once considered a traitor clears his name and becomes the main advisor or one of the main advisors to the DST. There were quite a few attacks that
bloodied Paris in the early 1980s. It’s true that Rondot
was a key figure. I think he is the person
within the state apparatus who knows best the real
secret threats against France, who, from the mid-1980s,
the terrorist threats against France. He is probably the one who is
most capable of analyzing whether it is the Iranian threats,
the threats from Hezbollah, the pro-Palestinian groups,
the Abu Nida, the Carlos, etc. He is probably the best
expert on all of this. Philippe Rondot’s long career
is full of brilliant achievements. The release of hostages in Libya
and Lebanon, the dismantling of terrorist networks
in Paris, the arrest of Carlos in 1994. But Philippe Rondot also has his regrets. The failure to free the
Tiberian monks, the failed hunt for Serbian war criminals. After this long career,
the Jospin government created a tailor-made position for him,
advisor for intelligence and special operations
to the Minister of Defense. After serving under Alain Richard,
he advised Michel Alliot-Marie. So, for me, Rondot was
the expert, in essence, who would be able to know where to
direct Imad Lahoud and what to do with it. I told him: He is Marwan’s brother.
That rings a bell. I must have met the father,
that rings a bell. Send me a resume. I’ll sift it,
I always remember. He told me this somewhere in November. So what are you doing?
I’m waiting, you know. I’m finding a bit of a taste for life again. I’m reconnecting with my family. My son, who was four months old when I
was incarcerated, I pick up the children from school, I think, I try.
And then I wait. The Executive Vice President
of EADS offers to help me. I say to myself: Well, it’s not free. If he did it, it’s because he has a job
to offer me, so I hope so. In December, I think,
Marwan will talk to me about it again. I think Imad tried
to reach me, but without success. But Marwan brought it up again, saying: You
know, he’s really convinced that this information could be useful.
Where are you at? Etc. I told him: Listen, I spoke
to Rondot about it again, I’m going to speak to him about it again. And indeed,
I see Rondot again at the beginning of January. And Philippe Rondot would later say,
notably during the Clearstream trial, that he asked for advice
from one of his Lebanese friends who was very, very well-connected in the
Middle Eastern intelligence community, who had recommended Imad Lahoud. Of course, he asked about me. He had a few people who
knew me, people who had worked
in intelligence in Lebanon and who were classmates of my father’s
at military school. He inquired with them. He told me that later. He really, as they say in the jargon
of the services, he riddled me at the time. Yes of course. Do you know
who he contacted? I know, but I won’t tell you. It’s Johnny Abdou, I guess.
He’s his godfather. This is what is most likely.
This is what is most likely. He is a former
head of the Lebanese secret services. He is a former
Lebanese ambassador to France. He is a very, very important character. Rondot’s specialty
is the Middle East, but especially from Lebanon. So
basically he was created He screened the character in relation
to people who knew him. These people who knew him, they’re
basically family, all that. So, we can also see clearly, it
still shows the fragility of even people who did it in good faith,
who are specialists. But we realize that even
specialists can be wrong. We still have a very
particular phenomenon with Imadla, where each time he enters a new
circle of power, he ultimately benefits from a guarantee. He reminds me of great spies
from the KGB or the CIAE, while he is all alone. Usually, the great spies
have all the… all the machines behind them.
There are big machines. He is all alone. But one of
Imad Lahoud’s questions is: is he really alone all the time? Even at the time of prison. The day when a case,
there is no longer a question mark, which is one of those that you pose,
there is no longer a case. And so, what’s good about this
story is that there’s a character who is ultimately very
romantic, and we don’t understand anything about this character. And that is one of the
interesting elements of this case as well. It’s a mystery. When
you see General Philippe Rondot for the first time , do
you know who you are going to see? No, not at all. I didn’t know that he was
supposedly the master spy who, for me, would later turn out to be a
very disappointing person. I expected to see
a soldier in uniform, etc. No way. I see a
very nice, middle-aged man in civilian clothes who looks like Mr. Been. Great manipulators
have a weakness. Contempt for those who deceive them
makes them underestimate the danger of their position. Manipulation, the beautiful, the real kind,
has something of the work, but it can be fatal. I wanted to play with them. I’m not saying: I
agreed to play with them. I said: I wanted to play with them because
I am a player and they didn’t force me, they didn’t threaten me by saying: If you
don’t play with us, you’ll go back to prison.
No ? It was naturally offered to me. So perhaps, in
the famous screening that was done, perhaps they said to themselves: Look,
he’s a little fragile at that moment. He’s playful, he’s a bit
fearful, if I may say so. And so there you have it, he’s the right recruit
for this operation. But in any case,
I gladly wanted to play with them. And so, sometimes they were stronger,
sometimes I was stronger and in the end, we all lost. For now,
four months after his release from prison, everything is working perfectly
for Imad Lahoud. I don’t know who
ultimately manipulated the other. Did Philippe Rondot manipulate me
or did I end up manipulating him in this affair?
I don’t know. For now, it’s still shared. But in any case,
if Philippe Rondot tried to manipulate me to make me do things,
he succeeded because I was completely seduced at the time. Awesome sleight of hand. As a seasoned player,
Lahoud masters the art of covering his tracks. The truth must be sought elsewhere,
in an official document. From his first contacts with Lahoud,
General Rondot reported to his minister, Michèle Alioumari. Subject: Operation Osama Bin Laden. On the recommendation of one of my
Arab sources, activated as part of the fight
against terrorism, I had contact, on January 15,
with a person who wanted to give me very sensitive information on
Doucema Bin Laden’s financial structures. The person in question had been one
of Doucema Bin Laden’s financial advisors, and until recently was aware of the schemes he had used
to increase his wealth. She had been in direct contact with
Osama Bin Laden several times, the first dating back to February 2001. She was willing,
without any compensation, but her motives are quite complex,
to reveal to us the part of the financial structures of which she was aware, with
supporting documents. Considering that I was
technically incapable of collecting and evaluating this information,
I organized a meeting with General Dominique Champeciau
and Alain Juillet on January 17, during a dinner to which
my informant had been invited. So there’s this dinner
at Aunt Margaret’s. It was a pretty
impressive dinner, as I went there without knowing who
I was going to meet. I knew General Rondot was there
and they had rented a private room. And so, there were three people:
Philippe Rondot, there was Philippe Rondot,
there was General Dominique Champeciau,
who was Pierre Brochand’s chief of staff ,
therefore the director general of the DGSE, and opposite Philippe Rondot,
there was Alain Juillet, who was at the DGSE at the time.
What was he again? He was the head of intelligence. So, we can still assume that I
‘m not dealing with useless people. So, these three great
bridges of intelligence. And so there, he questions me,
he asks me lots of questions. Questions that, at the time,
seemed completely trivial to me. Some of them were crazy, even back then,
when I was like, ‘I do n’t understand why I’m being asked this.’ What kind of crazy questions from
three intelligence chiefs? Like: Do you have any idea
where Osama Bin Laden is? In his note of January 20, 2003
to Michel Alliot-Marie, General Rondot continues:
The data provided by the latter easily convinced the representatives
of the DGSE that we had before us Not only a source of
exceptional quality, but also a very high-
level expert, capable of analyzing, or even penetrating, this
murky world of high finance. Naturally, the DGSE and I,
well aware that we must not engage in an operation
whose ins and outs may partly escape us and
lead to damaging political consequences , even
if only in the complex Franco-Lebanese relations,
we are taking every precaution to exploit the Madi vein
without giving rise to any possibility of instrumentalization
or manipulation on its part. What’s at stake for you at
this dinner? What’s at stake for you? The challenge for me
is to find work again. No more, no less at that moment. When you hear a response like that,
it’s quite unsettling. But then, either
he’s actually out of prison, he’s just looking for work and he has an opportunity
to work in the intelligence services just as he would have worked
in any other company. Is he doing this to
rehabilitate himself with his family? Is he doing this just to keep
playing, to invent a new life for himself, a spy’s life after this? Why do you put either, or, or? Basically, especially
intelligent people, you can’t reduce them. You can’t… We don’t have a motivation. We can clearly see that it is multiple. He has a lot of things on his mind. It’s still quite unusual. This means that at that moment,
we find in him the desire to rebuild himself, social recognition,
the need for revenge, the love of the game. He
must be a complicated character to be at the center of such an affair. And I think he’s someone you ca
n’t reduce, someone you can’t analyze rationally. And so, we must take it as a
whole and above all not try to dissect it. So, finally, the dinner comes
to an end, with General Rondot, Dominique Champeau, Alain Juillet. I am recruited and So,
I am recruited and I am clandestine. In the following weeks,
Imad Lahoud was referred to a secret agent of the DGSE, a man whose
code name was Antoine. This person becomes, according to the term used
in the services, Imad Lahoud’s case officer. The man will meet Lahoud clandestinely
and regularly so that he can provide the information he has. At each interview with Lahoud,
Antoine writes reports. On February 24, 2003,
Imad Lahoud stated that he had met Osama bin Laden three times. He
described him as a somewhat simple-minded but very methodical individual who was
unable to compete financially with his half-brothers, particularly Yislam. Imad Lahoud claims to have hidden
in Lebanon, with his mother and two of his childhood friends,
documents relating to financial transactions carried out on
behalf of the Bin Laden network. He offers, without compensation,
to put them back into service. Antoine specifies that this interview took place
on February 3, 2003, in General Rondot’s office at the
Ministry of Defense from 3:00 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. If Imad Lahoud succeeds in convincing
Rondot, it is because although he is an extraordinary
intellectual machine and one of the best connoisseurs, he also has an ego, something to tremble with excitement at the idea that there might be someone in the world who
would capture Bernaden or in any case who would have participated
in the capture of Bernaden. And what Imel Lahoud is doing
is selling this to France and selling this to its
representative, who is Rondot. A leader is never in contact
with a source, never. Because you always have to keep your
distance, you always have to cross paths. He takes the risk. Why is Rondot taking the risk? This is not just any source. It is presented
by Jean-Louis Gergorin. This source is
Marwan Lahoud’s brother. She is given credibility by many
people, but it is even more than this credibility by
important figures, it is also that Osama Bin Laden is offered to her. Is it fascinating, ultimately,
to join French espionage? Look, at the time, I don’t know anything about it. That’s how it happened for me.
I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know. Even Defence Minister
Michèle Alliot-Marie may already be thinking about the benefits of
such a promise. A solid lead on Bin Laden
would celebrate reconciliation with Bush’s America, then engaged in Iraq,
to which France had said no. The use of force is not justified.
Today, there is an alternative to war: disarming Iraq through inspections. A trader in London, a
pension fund manager in Paris, a prisoner in the Health Department and now a
secret agent for the services, Imad Lahoud is polishing his art. The love of the game,
the taste for risk and the adrenaline always take him higher. And the lie took so well
that General Rondot asked Gergorin to provide Lahoud with a job
and a salary at EADS. In other words, a cover. It’s not illegitimate, it’s
a major issue, anti-terrorism, etc. So, I receive Imad Lahoud,
who talks to me a lot, who tells me straight away, who thanks me,
who tells me straight away that he saw the DGSE, who starts talking to me a lot. I mean, he amazes me,
he gives me the feeling that he is already totally at ease at the DGSE. I have breakfast with Jean-Louis,
hysterical, 15 minutes, watch in hand, he moves in all directions, etc. And there he said to me: How much do you need? Pardon ?
How much do you need? I say: Listen, here you are,
maybe €3,000 a month. Okay, fine, I’ll
give you 5,000 tax-free. THANKS. And there you have it, I have a contract
for €5,000 excluding tax. So here I am to summarize the situation:
clandestine at the DGSE, under a consultant contract with EADS,
who pays me to be able to support myself and therefore work
for the good of the French State. There you go. The operational processing of Imad Lahoud
by the DGSE can now begin. It is February 26, 2003. Officer Antoine is writing his
first field report. Chronological sequence.
3:00 p.m. Arrival of the case officer at the
meeting point, Place de la Madeleine. 3:05 p.m. Imad Lahoud arrives at the
meeting point, driving his personal vehicle.
3:08 p.m. Arrived at the
Galeries Lafayette underground car park. 3:10 p.m.
Start of interviews. Relaxed atmosphere. Imad Lahoud was in a good mood
about the career prospects that are emerging
and apologized for the professorial tone when explaining
the financial arrangements. Topic covered: recovery
of documents in Beirut. 4:10 p.m., contact lost,
Imad Lahoud left. 4:15 p.m. Departure of the case officer. In the mapping that I had to
produce for the DGSE, there were, let’s say, two parts. There was a description of the financial transactions I had to learn about
for the Bin Laden family, okay, the pension fund
called Globe Investment Limited, which managed the family fortune. And then the other part,
trying to recover Merrill Lynch bank account titles
, through which Merrill Lynch cleared financial transactions. To be able to exploit the documents he
says he has in Lebanon, Lahoud must track the movement
of Bin Laden’s money from bank to bank and from country to country,
before September 11, 2001. However,
an interbank organization with which Lahoud worked when he was a
trader keeps track of all transactions made
by banks between themselves throughout the world. This is called
a clearing house. It is based in Luxembourg. It’s called Clearstream. For everyone, the
Clearstream affair is an enigma. For journalists Pierre Péan
and Vanessa Ratigné, this story hides another,
that of the political, financial and military-industrial powers
that have shaped France over the past 25 years. At the beginning of the affair,
there is a man, Imad Lahoud. I had a career
as a trader in England. I returned to France. I am setting up an investment fund
that is doing very well. There’s $42 million going
up in smoke. The fund is closed. There is a magistrate who indicts me
and throws me in prison. Theoretically, he’s a cooked guy. I am leaving the Santé remand center. I have no money, I’m alone. No, he’s not a cooked guy. And the first thing I do is
call my brother Marwan, who at the time was assistant to Jean-Louis
Jacquorin, executive vice-president of ADS. He gave me a big performance: I want to serve
my country. France is my country. And so the matter,
for me, begins like this. Imad Lahoud, the former trader,
claims to have documents on Al Qaeda’s finances. One of the biggest clients of the bank
I worked for was Bin Laden’s family. In this period, post-September 11,
Imad Lahoud is an important man. If Imad Lahoud succeeds in convincing people,
it is because he proposes Osama Bin Laden. After a few secret meetings, Lahoud
joined the intelligence services. Now he has to trace
Bin Laden’s money. He hopes to find traces of it
in Luxembourg, in the Bank of Banks. We needed the
Clearstream account directory. And Denis Robert had it. At the end of February 2003, Imad Lahoud, the former trader turned
intelligence agent, was preparing to contact the journalist Denis Robert. The journalist who has been investigating
the Luxembourg clearing house Clearstream for several years. 8:36 a.m., France Info’s choices
, Nicolas Pocahont. But who is Denis Robert really? Denis Robert, the man who has
been at the heart of the Clearstream affair for 10 years, a writer and journalist,
was the one who carried out the first major investigation into this
Luxembourg bank. He went through dozens of trials,
more than 60 trials, I think, and then he was… You are standing
next to Dominique de Villepin in the dock, still in court. The Court of Cassation has just overturned it. Three of your convictions,
the fines are cancelled, and your legal costs will be reimbursed. And this morning, suddenly,
you have a big winner’s smile. Yes, no, but I
always had a smile. That’s not the problem. But it’s true that the highest
French judicial authority, the Court of Cassation, 14 magistrates,
after two years of work, weighing the pros and cons,
say that I was right, that Clearstream is a company that really… There is a real problem at the level of
international finance with this company. So, knowing that this is true, what does
it mean, politically? This means that at the heart of Europe,
protected by a state like Luxembourg, there is a national
financial powerhouse with 10,000 billion euros in its accounts and which practices
the concealment of operations, that there are 6,000 open camps
in tax havens. Once we know that and
can say that, what do we do? So there are two Clearstream cases. The first
is Denis Robert’s investigation, which made him the
French journalist most attacked for defamation, insult and slander. It is the investigation that makes us
all aware of the existence of clearing houses. And then
there is the second Clearstream affair, that of the falsified account lists. In which the journalist will be
manipulated and inexorably carried away. They tell me: You’re the guy who… It’s because of your books that all this… But I’m not responsible. I mean, the guy who invents love,
he’s not responsible for the crime of passion. You see, if Denis Robert found himself
in the infernal spiral of a legal and media saga,
it is because the man is possessed by an obsession with the opaque circuits
of international finance. And this obsession has a history. A story that begins for him
in the early 90s. From the early 90s,
financial power grew in power in balance with other powers,
whether political power or industrial power, and what’s more, there were
going to be very few journalists who were interested in
the power of finance. And this is where Denis Robert will start,
in particular. He was one of the first, if not the first,
to try to understand what was happening,
particularly with the clearing houses, and how crime could become
established in these systems. And this is what Denis Robert
was a pioneer in. When I’m at Libération, I’m one of the only ones interested in business, that is to say, in democracy, in the way
political parties are financed. I take out files, things like that,
and I realize quite quickly that there are constants which are
tax havens. All the French political parties,
at least the G&Os and the Communist Party apart, because I had
n’t worked on them, but the others all had
funding that went through tax havens, which is
still enormous and it’s revolting. And so, as a journalist,
I am at the first age and I want to denounce this, which is what I do. And in the early 1990s,
the whole of Europe discovered, like him, the extent of dirty money. In every country, huge
corruption cases are breaking out. Today, when the President of the Council
comes to Parliament to talk about improving the morality of Italian public life,
he is booed. In Italy, judges launch
a clean sweep against the mafia. 1,000 arrests,
around forty requests for the lifting of parliamentary immunity,
seven suicides and the country’s flagship companies in the judges’ sights. In Germany,
revelations about the CDU’s secret funding bring
down Al Moudkohl. Confession of a man who was the most powerful
in Germany, the father of reunification. In Russia, Kremlin oligarchs are emerging in Boris Yeltsin’s shadow. In France,
cases of hidden financing are tarnishing political parties. In Switzerland, legislators are looking
into money laundering. As for drug money,
it was estimated at that time to be worth more than all
oil revenues, money that flooded the circuits
of global finance. In the tumult of the 1990s,
a new expression entered the dictionary:
money laundering. A colossal financial mass
that is insinuating itself into the bastions of the CAC 40, eating away at national economies
and ultimately rotting democracies. Denis Robert is aware
that European judges, driven by the same dynamic,
are finally tackling financial crimes and that they will not give up. Denis came to see me and said: There is
something striking. He had the idea of taking
his magistrates on a tour of Europe. And we saw that each country
had similar problems. Hence the idea, I don’t know who, you
never know who is responsible. In any case,
it was a discussion between Denis and me to say: We’re going to
try to ask them to make a call that synthesizes all of that,
that moves up a gear to regroup to make a call. We thought of a manifesto. Then after that, it became the call. We had to find a place. Geneva seemed central. And it became the Geneva Call, which we
cobbled together by finding the University of Geneva with a fax machine in an office. There was no email back then. And so there you have it, it was put together like this. This is a first in the world
of European justice. Six magistrates have emerged from the shadows. Each of them, in their own country,
investigates sensitive cases. Political power must no longer
poke its nose into judicial transfers between states. Judges must be able to
work directly with each other. The tools we have are
artisanal tools, whereas we are dealing with an industry. They confided in a journalist,
Denis Robert, in a book launched today in Geneva,
entitled Justice or Chaos. In the shadow of this
visible, official and respectable Europe under construction, hides another Europe,
more discreet, less avowable. It is the Europe of tax havens
that prospers shamelessly thanks to the capital to which it
lends a complacent refuge. It is also the Europe of
financial centers and banking establishments where secrecy is too
often an alibi and a front. This Europe of numbered accounts
and money laundering machines is used to launder money from drugs,
terrorism, sects, corruption and mafia activities. Some personalities and
political parties have themselves, on various occasions, benefited from these circuits.
In the name of equality of all citizens before the law, we hope for the signing of an
international convention between European countries, guaranteeing the lifting of banking secrecy
in cases of international mutual assistance in criminal matters
by the judicial authorities of the various signatory countries, where this
secrecy could still be invoked. Justice or chaos,
the choice is simple. I made mine. The Geneva Appeal brings to a head
the clash between two worlds, that of the judiciary
and that of the executive. The judiciary makes the executive tremble,
the executive, for its part, does everything to limit the power of the judges. It is the fight between two legitimacies,
a fight as old as the world. For Denis Robert,
the result exceeded his expectations. Here he is, embodying the alliance
of judicial and media powers. That day,
somewhere in a house in the suburbs of Luxembourg City,
a man heard the call. This is Ernest Backus. In the months that followed,
Ernest Backus and Denis Robert met several times. I discover a guy who has
a big beard. He speaks, I have the impression that there is
always a plot behind it. And at the same time,
he fascinates me quite a bit because he has a great knowledge of finance. He talks to me about a lot of things,
especially Italian things. And that fascinates me. You can’t understand everything
that happens next if you don’t understand
the relationship I have with him. In fact, it’s a relationship that will last. It’s about time that it happens. I am very intrigued by this character. I feel that he is the holder of important knowledge. I go to his house and you know
the house, so there are places where he has archives, he has loads of stuff. I ask him what he is doing. He said to me: I worked
for banks. Then, over time, he
began to tell me. I said to him: But it’s
not really a bank. And what is it called? It’s called Clearstream,
but it’s called Cedal. It used to be called Cedal.
What is Cedal? It is a central
delivery center for securities. I didn’t understand anything about
this whole story. Until I met him,
I thought that as soon as a financial transfer crossed a border
or went through tax authorities, we lost all trace of
it, that there was such a speed of exchanges, of transactions,
that there was no memory of money. And in contact with him, I realize that there are
not many places like this on the planet, since here, in this case, there are only two which
are these famous compensation fields which are above all notaries,
that is to say people who permanently record all
financial transactions. Right away, it intrigues me.
I say to myself: But how does it work? And I keep asking
Ernest questions about it. And I understand at some point. I understand several things. First of all, I understand the existence of these
boxes, that they record financial transactions,
but also that they preserve them, that is to say that there are memories,
that there are archives of all of this. He tells me more precisely about his role,
he tells me about the existence of micro-fiches, he tells me about the existence
of listings, etc. And there, I really have the feeling that we have
something burning our fingers, which is enormous. Because before this system,
you had to go with your suitcases of tickets, there were problems with
money security, etc. So it’s a banking revolution. And it’s Backus who
allows me to access that. But at some point,
I realize that not only did he work there, but he founded it. You could say I
contributed a lot to the original concept. It was agreed, when creating
cross-border clearing houses, to centralize
bonds and other securities for clearing in one place only. And on the other hand,
to channel into the system the money necessary to liquidate these operations. Like everyone who meets him,
I am initially a little withdrawn because he is a character who cannot
open a sentence without making an incision, which itself is on a
third insistence, etc. We’ve completely lost the thread. It’s a somewhat encyclopedic passage. And at the same time,
when he unrolls the thread of the clearing house, I have a click for me which is… But it’s incredible,
that is to say that in fact, we are told that today,
everything is complicated, we can no longer control anything, etc. And in fact,
in the history of clearing houses, we have a system that was initially transparent and which has been made opaque. The complexity was intended, was created,
since at the beginning, you have… When you buy securities,
etc., you send them by post. It takes only a day or a week
to receive the title deed. And one day, we decide, thanks to
computers, to become a kind of enormous central computer. At the time, in 72, 73,
it was the biggest computer ordered from IBM in Europe, so it was
already a central room. And it’s a
banking cooperative and everything is transparent. And little by little, we will see
the pockets of opacity grow inside this clearing house. So, what is a cooperative,
transparent instrument for banking facilitation is gradually becoming
an opaque place, a black box. The story goes like this:
Ernest was fired from the company in 1983. But since he founded the company,
he was the one who hired a lot of people there. Among the people who handle the
mail is a friend of Ernest Backus. And so this friend
will give Ernest the list in the form of self-adhesive labels
of all the company’s customers. And him, with his wife
, that’s part of the madness of the character. There are people who
knit, there are people who watch TV. He, on his laptop, as he says,
on his computer, he will type all these labels one by one. And
at the same time it has the list of published accounts, that is, the members
of this system receive a list with the published accounts every month. If we subtract
the full listing, the Postal and Kabaqus labels,
and this listing of published accounts, we have approximately 1,900 unpublished accounts. And that’s it, the whole investigation, everything
I’m going to do is based on that. That is to say, there, if you like,
it is because I am told: I have no proof, but that is the proof. The evidence is the documents,
the labels. I have them, I saw them,
I checked all that. And it’s true that when you start
to look into your accounts, you find some
absolutely fascinating things. We find that it is
not just banks. We find that there are multinationals
that have accounts there, we find that there are 1,900 unpublished accounts
, many of which. These unpublished accounts are offshore companies that have
accounts in Turca Incaicos, in Vanuatu, in all the
tax havens on the planet. Oddly enough, they are the ones with a
lot of unpublished accounts. If we are unpublished, it means
that we want to hide our existence. Why do we want to hide it? Maybe for good reasons, but
maybe for bad reasons too. Denis Robert was hunting down dirty money. He discovers the circuit
of money in general. Clearstream is 50 trillion euros
that pass
through the system every year. And that’s around 10 trillion euros
of value that is stored in the system.
A trillion is 12.0. This means that 50 trillion euros pass through the system each year and 10 trillion euros are
retained in value within the system. Denis Robert therefore asked Ernest Backus
to share his pen to describe the system, its methods and its black holes. We are in the presence
of an organized system that has accompanied the explosion of the
financial markets and has adapted to the best interests of a few key groups. The self-control of financial markets
and the collusion of a few large banks
and multinationals seeking to conceal their profits have
led to unbearable excesses, to the detriment of
market transparency. This transparency
which is theoretically the very foundation of liberalism. In the long run, no one has any interest in continuing to put up with this. In
this universe presented as impenetrable, information circulates in almost real time. The language is coded,
the uninitiated are kept out, the rules are rarely
written or communicable. Many outside this microcosm
act as if stories of speculation,
mergers, or the movement of financial masses have no
influence on our lives. Revelation in the plural. When a former banker chooses such a title
for his book, global finance might have cause for concern. When, in addition, it comes from Luxembourg,
a country where banking secrecy is so sacred that it is enshrined
in the Constitution, we can expect an explosive work. The system would be based
on double accounting. In principle,
every bank that is a Clearstream client has an official account, which is
called a published account. Optionally, she can open an unpublished sub-account
, which is more flexible and more discreet. The success of the unpublished accounts
has been meteoric. Two in 83, two thousand in 95,
almost eight thousand last year. Some banks were
curiously fond of it. Example: Crédit Lyonnais. 17 unpublished accounts in 95,
a record for a French bank. Even more seriously, a Russian bank linked
to the mafia, Menatep Bank, had only one unpublished account. Total opacity, guaranteed. Clearstream has issued a blanket denial and is
suing the authors of the book for defamation. All this would be nothing but a
malicious invention and revenge of a former dismissed manager. Both unpublished and
published accounts are simple information tools that allow our clients
to verify certain details of their account, their name, their code number,
before sending an instruction. It’s as simple as that. Simple, except when we ask the big
boss, here on the left, specific questions about this or that client.
There, no answer. A question of ethics, we are told. Among the consequences of the
revelation, there is the fact that the French Parliament is taking it
up through the parliamentary information mission of
Vincent Peillon and Arnaud Montebourg, who are investigating the fight
against money laundering in different countries in Europe, and who are there, precisely, going to
announce that the revelations you are making are shattering. The fact-finding mission
was really important. It was important because there were
politicians doing their job. The Parliamentary Mission
on Money Laundering wants to hear from the authors of the book Revelation. In their book, Denis Robert and the
Luxembourg financier Bax, the authors, describe a
system of accounts and banking transactions that can conceal
illegal practices. If we wanted to welcome you
today, Mr. Backe and Mr. Robert, it is because in the book you have just
published, you address questions that are at the
heart of our concerns. This obviously
opens up a chasm of questions for all of us, but since you have
thought more about these issues than we have, what use can these
unpublished accounts, not linked to published accounts, be? I am convinced that those
who do not appear linked to a main account, therefore published at that time, are all these addresses which, in the case of a search by
any authority, would not like to be found members
of one of these clearing houses. So here we are going to give it a try. If we type MENATEp in this internal list and the system will look for it. And here we see that Clearstream account 81,738 , the MENATEp account, was opened in Moscow on May 16, 1997. Apparently,
who is this list available to? The members of the board of directors?
No. Not even? It’s an internal list that we recovered,
well, that we didn’t steal, but that was entrusted to us,
because precisely, no doubt, the people who entrusted it to us were
scandalized because they thought they understood. And so, that’s kind of
why we got it. Now, if we go to the
Clearstream website and we have the list of customers in alphabetical order. And there is the list of accounts. There are about 7,500 accounts
that are the published accounts. We have about 7,500 of them. And if we go looking for
MenaTep now, then we wo n’t find MenaTep. That is to say, Clearstream has the
easy task at that time of saying to the authorities who come to investigate
a Mena-Tep account: Listen, on a Menatep account, here are our lists. We don’t even have a Menatep here. The figure you gave us,
you confirm it, that is to say you say: There are 15,000 accounts. Is that roughly it? 15,000 accounts, 7,500 of which
are unpublished. Because when we take the example
of Ménatep, we take an example that speaks to everyone’s ears. But I imagine that 7,500
are not just Menateps. So institutions that we can
consider, whether they are large companies
now or banks, as being completely
in accordance with the rules of transparency, etc., of international diligence, would
themselves have recourse to this system. This is what your demonstration implies. If you want me to show you – I
would like you to show us accounts opened in the name of companies,
whether it’s Unilever, Siemens, etc. Siemens, which is a company,
a multinational that makes TGVs, etc., therefore has an account number 77 054,
which is not published. Unilever, which is currently laying off staff
everywhere, is a Dutch multinational. We also see that she
has an unpublished account. Unpublished, meaning there
is no main account. Unilever is directly in the system. So as not to cause any jealousy, we’ll… The French group Accor Wagonlie
also has an unpublished account. Mr. Robert, could you –
and I’m curious about this because it’s a subject that concerns
all public authorities today –
show us this proliferation of accounts that are present in what
we call offshore territories or tax havens. Can we have
a visualization of this? I found a French bank
just now while preparing the thing. Natexis, which is linked to the
Banque Populaire network, has an account in Cayman. In Panama, there are quite a few
Crédit Lyonnais accounts that are also unpublished. With the release of the revelation, a wind of panic is blowing over Luxembourg. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is
forced to open a preliminary investigation. The stakes are high.
At the time, banking activity represented more than a third of its GDP. The world of finance is roasted. Clearstream is, along with Euroclear and Swift,
one of the three pillars of financial globalization and
the interconnection of all markets. The stakes are far more dizzying
than those of the Russian mafia or drug money. André Lucie is in the sights
of the Luxembourg justice system. The Clearstream chairman is suspected
of tax fraud, forgery and use of forged documents,
fabrication of false balance sheets, failure to report financial crimes, and
money laundering. Lucie and her
close guard have disembarked. The system is taken back in hand. An audit was entrusted to Arthur Andersen,
who mobilized around thirty consultants to dissect the
clearing house’s practices. It’s a very interesting moment to experience,
since we say to ourselves that with books, we’re actually going to change the situation,
since the CEO of this company is going to be fired. There is an investigation open in Luxembourg,
all the magistrates are calling us. There will be a moment of
tremendous excitement, before and after the release, and of anxiety too,
since there is pressure for the book not to come out,
since there are lawyers who are starting to come forward, etc. And at the end of this investigation,
I will have another meeting which will be absolutely decisive,
which is the meeting with Régis Hempel. Régis Hempel was head
of IT at Clearstream, then vice-president of the company. He was dismissed in 1992, after 20 years of loyal service. I know Backus was mad at me for seeing Apple, but Apple had an acquaintance. He stayed in the box
much longer than Backus. At the time, he was
vice-president of the firm. He was responsible
for all IT. He had a good salary and
suddenly found himself fired, with no compensation, no salary,
nothing, having to fend for himself. And so he spoke to me because I
brought him tremendous revenge. And if you like, at one point,
he throws this warhead at me which is: But my job was to erase
the traces of the transactions. Erase traces, transactions?
Yeah. And there I say to myself: But how come? And then he starts
giving me details. The main thing, he told me: Me, my job… So I was in charge of IT,
I had programmers under my orders, and every morning,
customer service told me: When you have this number or that
number, among the thousands of transactions he was doing behind
his screen, forget it. He would create a fake computer crash
and the transaction would disappear. That is, Clearstream no
longer kept track of transactions. I’m glad to see you.
Here, I kiss you. Hi. Hi. So when Revelation is published,
there is a lot of talk about it. Denis Robert lifts the veil
on international clearing, the potential abuses of Clearstream,
there is a parliamentary fact-finding mission , there is an investigation which is
also open at the Luxembourg prosecutor’s office. Didn’t it bother you
that there was this dual system? It was part of the thing from the beginning.
No, but I don’t want that anymore. I don’t care anyway. No, but I know you don’t care. On the erasure of traces, concretely,
with a basic example, erasing traces
means transaction traces, but basically, what are we erasing? We erase, let’s say… It’s very technical,
I’ll say, you have to understand. The transaction is cleared. The result, in the end, is the same,
because the balances, at the end, there is a securities balance and a money,
cash balance, which must be the same thing. If we make a transaction that we place in cash and then we return securities, at the end of the day, the balance is the same. We remove the transaction, but the
account balance is zero, it’s the same. Clearing traces
means, in concrete terms, that we erase what constitutes our exchange,
but that in the end, we will not see that you have
securities, we will just see that you have a standard sum.
A balance, yes. So, if we look at the end and we no
longer have the path, your balance and my balance have absolutely not changed. So, we cannot prove,
we cannot even know that I sold you securities. I have two more questions. The first being: what is
the point of deleting a transaction? The question is not well posed. Let me rephrase it for you. Why would you
want this transaction not to appear?
I can also rephrase it. You have to rephrase it because
I’m going to answer you now, but you have to formulate it well. You have to look
towards the salary money. What’s the point of me not knowing
that I sent you money? You transfer money.
That’s the question. What’s the point? That’s something you can
answer for yourself. I will answer you. I have tits,
you give me money. Where does this money come from? If you have a fairly large number,
where does it come from? And if we inflate the trace,
we don’t ask you this question. Since in the end,
I didn’t make any money, I didn’t lose any money, nothing changed. Since you have titles. Since I have titles. So, we can think that it is a system
which is very useful in the context of payments of money whose origin is
not very legal. Occult, they are not legal. Occult.
Occult. A transaction is erased to
launder money, since it is not seen that the money is
used to buy shares. So it comes back into the system
completely legally. It is a possibility. It is a possibility, yes. So,
from there, we can think from a distance of arms export markets,
all those things, in short, anything that can give rise
to a payment of hidden money. Rates are tightening
around Clearstream. If the concealment of dirty money
is possible, Denis Robert also demonstrates that certain States
also have their accounts with Clearstream. The erasure of transactions can
therefore obscure the intervention of certain central banks which,
hidden from the market, can covertly support their own
currency, buy back or resell their own debt or that of other countries. Régis Hempel’s statements on the
concealment of traces are explosive. The Luxembourg prosecutor’s office has no
choice but to open a preliminary investigation against Clearstream for misuse
of corporate assets, forgery and use of forged documents, false balance sheets,
money laundering and tax fraud. And now, in the center of
attention, Régie Sempel. It was Régie Sempel who appeared before
the public prosecutor and who suddenly spoke of a system
of systematic manipulation in Clearstream’s IT system. And so, after Hamperl
met with the two specialists from the
Financial Sector Supervisory Commission, and just a moment before opening the judicial investigation,
I went to see Clearstream’s reference shareholder. And the idea was quite simple: would it
be possible, if necessary, to secure the cooperation
of the main shareholder? Because if we had had to do it with the famous
flashing light on Boulevard Royal or another boulevard here in Luxembourg,
it would certainly have jeopardized or at least seriously
disrupted the functioning of society. Is it after this that you will
carry out the search at Clearstream at the beginning of June 2000?
We went to the premises. Firstly, the investigating judge,
representing the public prosecutor’s office, the investigators from the judicial police service
, and with Hamperl, at the Clearstream premises,
who cooperated from the start. Witness Hempel was put in front of
the computer systems. And what will Hempel find?
Nothing. And don’t you think that
the fact that you spoke with perhaps the Clearstream management before
the search, the fact that Mr. Paul found nothing, is that something that we
can’t ask ourselves? No. Isn’t the element of surprise
something that is fundamental in this context, in this investigation framework?
Nothing can disappear. We went to look in the archives. Part of the archives was
in the building itself. There was some kind of
archive in another place, everything was checked and we didn’t have
the possibility of making anything disappear.
All right. Regis Hempel has a completely different version
of the search, but it doesn’t matter. Since Clearstream’s management
is notified in advance of this search, it is
undoubtedly in a position to make arrangements.
Manipulations are possible. Régis Hempel will
also testify before the parliamentary mission led
by Vincent Peillon and Arnaud Montebourg. The MPs published their
report at the beginning of 2002. France is not at the forefront
in the fight against the laundering of
dirty money, whether from drugs, prostitution
or various mafia systems. This is the very clear conclusion of a
parliamentary report presented this morning. We just did the cartwheel. Now, we must, in a way,
on this immense financial highway where there is no central reservation, there
are very few yellow lines, no police, never any speed cameras,
restore a little public order, because for the moment, Europe is a sieve. A financial fortress at the heart of the
European Union and a real obstacle to the fight against money laundering,
Luxembourg is not spared in the report published by French MPs. Despite some progress,
the Grand Duchy remains a tax, financial and also legal haven. If a judge sends a letter of request
to Luxembourg, he may be subject to a procedure that almost exclusively exists in
Luxembourg, namely the means of appeal. There is a long time before he
gets satisfaction. Similarly,
there are styles of society that allow the identity
of those behind them to be concealed. So there are a number
of problems that need to be resolved if we want to give ourselves the means to fight
transnational crime. Luxembourg, after the war,
is the Limousin. There are three banks and cows. There is nothing more. And you find yourself 30 or 40 years
later with one of the largest financial centers in the world. You have to see the
central street of Luxembourg. You have Crédit Lyonnais, Nomura. You have all the banks that are there. And what is incredible
is that it is a rural society in which everyone
is so-and-so’s cousin, etc. Who find themselves operating
one of the largest financial centers in the world. So, this mix is mind-blowing
in Luxembourg. Revelation: Media pressure
and the French Parliamentary Information Mission , which describes
Luxembourg as a tax and legal haven, are destabilizing the Grand Duchy. A diplomatic crisis erupts
between Paris and Luxembourg City. Luc Frieden, who is both Minister
of the Treasury and Minister of Justice, calls the press. I would like to say
welcome to paradise. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Like us, you have
read the Peillon-Montebourg report on Luxembourg this morning. It is a set of clichés, prejudices,
assertions that are made based on statements by certain people,
but which are rarely verified on the ground. So, the witnesses in this book
or this investigation are mythomaniacs. There are a number of us who are starting to
become mythomaniacs because that was n’t all there was to it. Now there was Backus, now there
is M’Paul, there are others, there is the peasant Montebourg. So, at some point,
to attack us for defamation, to attack a pole for
false testimony, otherwise, there are not two realities, there is only one. I am using the means of democracy
to explain to you that what has been stated does not correspond to reality. And so, I think that’s where,
when there is evidence for certain things, I feel that there is
n’t that evidence. I have tried,
both in terms of money laundering and banking activity, as well as mutual assistance,
to demonstrate to you exactly the opposite of what is claimed. What other questions? Denis Robert is still asking himself these questions
, even though Clearstream has launched two legal proceedings against him,
the start of a long, very long series. Despite the trials that are beginning,
Denis Robert is becoming more and more involved with his investigation into
the clearing house every day. At the end of 2001,
the phone rang at my office and a guy, a rather young voice, said to me:
My name is Jonathan Gantry, I have some documents that might interest you. What are these documents? This is a listing of 33,341
accounts, dating back to September 2001. I know you’re
still investigating Clearstream and you have lawsuits, etc. I think this document can help you. He comes to see me and I see a man
much younger than I had imagined. He explains to me that his name is not
Jeannette Angantry, but Florian Bourges and that
he worked at Arthur Andersen. He was in charge of an audit
following the release of the revelation. At first, he didn’t believe
the revelations at all. In fact, when he searched,
he saw that there was a lot of computer bread,
that it matched Emple’s testimony, and he tried to denounce it
in his audit, but his employer tore up all the memos he had made. The audit was paid 16 million euros. We knew that at the time of the trial,
but it was a figure that was… I was told 10, but in fact, it’s 16. 16 million for an audit that has
not been published, but where are we? What is it for ? Why did they do that? Why did they pay? What was in this audit? All that, move along, there’s nothing to see. Forget it, as Hempel would say. While it is exciting.
For what ? How ? So Florian Bourges decided,
to help me and to get this scandal out, to give me this list. Obviously, neither he nor I can imagine for
a second what will happen to us next. Florian Bourges is the third source
to confirm the revelations about Clearstream, the
centerpiece of the international financial system. A system whose perversity we now understand
, the crises revealing the abyss into which
financial capitalism is plunging civilization. A combat journalist,
Denis Robert has written numerous articles and made press appearances and has
embarked on writing a new book, supported by the listings of Florian Bourges. Clearstream is
stepping up its prosecution against him. In total, there will be 62 trials
and 312 descents. This judicial bombardment
gradually casts doubt on him and the clearing house becomes, for
Denis Robert, a real obsession. Indeed, I am
caught in a cycle. And did I have a choice? It’s quite hard to understand,
because everyone says to me: Why are you going on about this? Why do you continue? And it’s not me who persists, it’s
not me who continues. It is not me who files complaints
against me, it is not me who denies. I mean, I was obliged in a
strictly journalistic, ethical way, how could I
not continue, not justify myself, not explain why I did all that? I can’t take this story anymore. My life is also elsewhere. For the journalist, the obsession will
soon turn into a nightmare. The documents
given to him by Florian Bourges would become the very famous
listings of the Clearstream affair. So, in February 2003,
you will meet a man who will send you
into a downward spiral: Imad Lahoud. Could you tell us Denis Robert
will indeed plunge into a spiral that will take him
into a completely different story. A story he probably would
never have dared to write. Imad Lahoud, the
French intelligence agent tracking bin Laden’s money,
will soon make a dramatic entrance into his life. Remember,
Lahoud says he has documents in Lebanon about Bin Laden’s money. He also has knowledge
of the journalist’s writings. He became interested in them and convinced Antoine,
his case officer for the DGSE, that he should obtain them. So,
I had to recover these documents which were in Lebanon and at the same time,
we needed, to put opposite and then be
able to check, the directory of accounts at Clearstream. And Denis Robert had it. So, I simply suggest to Antoine
that he go and see Denis, approach him, so to make contact,
as they say, and see if one, yes, he really has the
client list, and then two, actually consider, why not,
stealing it if necessary, if he really has it. So, I spoke to the DGSE about it,
and so we set up the Irobert operation. I have authorization from
the DGSE to go there, and I am going. I see a guy in a suit coming,
clean-cut, small glasses, cash register attached. And so this is Imad. You’re not going into it with a flower
in your gun, if I may say so, since you were… Tell
us now, at what point did this
idea come about – No, no, no, no, no, a bit like the person who
fights against big capital, etc. And then we decide on a brief. What should
I tell Denis? Very early on, he told me that he had been in prison
for a scam, but one of which he was a victim. And he explains to me that he needs my
listings to find traces of financial partners of his who have
opened accounts in the Virgin Islands. And who swindled him. And there, Denis was extremely
kind and very open. And he said to me… Then I read your books,
you did an extraordinary job. I myself use Clearstream as
my tap lot when I work on the trading floor, and I’ve learned
a few things from reading you, so I’m getting a bit of a polish and all that. I made a mistake, which is that I did
n’t choose to take a false one. Okay. And his identity? He tells me that his brother’s name is
Marwan Lahoud, he is president of the arms branch at EADS. He is someone who has a civil status,
he is someone who does not lie about his identity, he is someone who
was a trader, who we see in an Eric Rochand film on the stock market. So there’s no reason
to blame this guy. We both go alone to his
office and there he engraves the elements, gives them to me and I leave with them. The day after
the lists were collected, a meeting was arranged between Antoine and Imad Lahoud. The DGSE officer writes:
Relaxed atmosphere. Topics covered.
Imad Lahoud’s trip to Metz. Supplies received. Two CD-ROMs containing,
according to Imad Lahoud, the list of numbered and unnumbered accounts
domiciled at Clearstream. With their
beneficiaries, the financial movements having passed through this bank. On page 2, Antoine continues. Imad Lahoud took advantage of a
phone call received by Denis Robert lasting more than 20 minutes to copy as much
data as possible. Because at the DGSE , you
say that it was you who recovered them, taking advantage of a
call that was made to them. Yes. First of all, I never said that to the DGSE,
since Denis kindly gave them to me. So I don’t see why it
was necessary to say: I stole them. I don’t know, I stick to the… Yes, but I was asked the question: No,
Denis, yes, he left on the phone at one point and we were
both in his office. His old Mac was burning. So I waited patiently
for it to end. And then I left with it. I’ve already given this listing to tons
of other people, so I have no reason not to give it to him. I would be crazy to send him packing, to
say: No, I don’t want to, you are Lebanese, I don’t want to
work with Lebanese people. Why would I say
no to something like that? While Nirober’s operation worked
as planned, the same cannot be said for the documents
that Lahoud says he has in Lebanon. The famous documents on
Bin Laden’s money. Recovery attempts
follow one another and fail. The department is beginning to find the time
long and to doubt the reliability of its new agent. Antoine writes: It is now imperative
to be a little more directive with Imad Lahoud, particularly to avoid any
slippage concerning documents whose recovery is an absolute priority. A break will be necessary once
the documents have been recovered in order to seriously consider the future
of the contact, even if these months are numbered. In the spring of 2003,
Imad Lahoud sensed that his relationship with the service was beginning to
crack and that the new social status he had built for himself
might slip away from him. How will Imad Lahoud, the former trader,
the former head of an investment fund, how will Imad Lahoud,
the secret service agent, once again rebuild his fortune? History is about to change. The rest will be written within the
very closed circle of arms dealers.
18 Comments
Bravo
DEMOCRAT AP KRAZE AMERICA Democrat ap kraze America Democrat ce Satan Democrat kraze
Merci Est ce qu'il y a une suite ?
👍👍
Il se son tellement servi que c'est devenu une habitudes pour heux
France ARBITRAIRE et maffieuse de la V ème République de. …de Gaulle la Malice.
Cool on peux choisir la couleur du missile mais à la fin forcément sa fini rouge morceaux humain 🎉
On cherche quoi avec cette vidéo. Je pense ça à un lien avec Gaza
possible d avoir la suite ?
Bon à savoir 🎉🎉🎉
Devillepin voulait uniquement detruire Sarkozy
Marrant, ça sort pendant que Villepin tente discrétos de revenir en promettant que "non-non" ce n'est pas son intention 😀 Bon après moi, de Villepin ne me dérange pas. Mais tout de même, la ficelle est grosse…
ou est la suite?
Pour voir le comment du pourquoi
Regardez manipulation une histoire française de pierre péan
Tous pourris glg ps nfr
j'ai toujours su que les etats et les orguanisations criminelles etaient de connivence.
Merci pour les mises à jour continues. Je préfère trader en bourse car c'est plus rentable. Je gagne en moyenne 34 500 € toutes les 2 semaines même si je trade à peine..
✊Je dirais qu'il faudrait mettre davantage l'accent sur le day trading, car il est moins sensible à la nature imprévisible du marché. ✊J'ai réalisé plus de 6,7 BT C en day trading et j'ai commencé avec seulement 0,9 BT C en six semaines grâce aux analyses et aux signaux de Bernard Jefferson. Il avait une longueur d'avance sur les autres analystes.