Affaire des avions renifleurs
The Affaire des avions renifleurs (scandal of the sniffer planes) is a known fraud scandal at the Elf Aquitaine company , which cost the company around 1 billion francs. The fraudsters succeeded in tricking the French state-owned company into having an efficient method of searching for oil from the air. High state officials and politicians were involved, for whom the search for oil was a high priority after the oil price crisis in order to ensure France's energy independence. The fraud was discovered in 1979, but it did not become public until 1983 through an investigation by the journalist Pierre Péan of the magazine Le Canard enchaîné .
The perpetrators of the fraud were an Italian television repairman and inventor named Aldo Bonassoli and his Belgian financier, engineer Alain de Villegas. In May 1976 they signed a contract with Elf Aquitaine for the development of a radar for searching for oil from the aircraft for 400 million francs (270 million euros). Mediators were the former secret service agent and lawyer Jean Viollet, the former board member of Elf Aquitaine Antoine Pinay and the banker of UBS Philippe de Weck, and the deal was approved by the Prime Minister Raymond Barre and the President of the Republic Valéry Giscard d'Estaing . A test over Brest was successful: the inventors should take an airplane to find oil reserves in the area, which Elf Aquitaine was already familiar with. However, the fraudsters knew of the deposits from internal Elf Aquitaine records. They met scientific objections with the threat of selling the invention to the USA or the Middle East.
The fraudsters kept getting new money from Elf, a total of around one billion francs. For this, Bonassoli and Villegas allegedly researched their invention at the castle of Villegas near Brussels Château de Rivieren (Ganshoren). The first cracks in its history came when the new president of Elf Albin Chalandon commissioned two independent physicists to evaluate the invention in 1977. In addition, on the recommendation of the fraudsters, oil was drilled in South Africa, but only basalt was found, while oil discoveries were only to be expected in sedimentary rocks. The drilling devoured 100 million francs, but the fraudsters excused themselves by saying that they should have drilled deeper. They also managed to convince the military that their invention could also be used to discover nuclear submarines of the French, which is why they were declared a secret. Finally, the physicist Jules Horowitz managed to convict the fraudsters during a demonstration of their invention. The fraudsters used to locate an object behind a wall on their screen and wanted to do that again this time, but Horowitz had previously changed the position of the object without their knowledge.
In July 1979, the new bosses of Elf Aquitaine terminated the contract. About 500 million francs could still be secured, the rest flowed through accounts in Panama mainly to Viollet and de Weck, who financed conservative (Catholic) political circles in France and Italy ( Istituto per le Opere di Religione ). The fraudsters Bonasolli and Villegas received only a small part of the millions. A report by the French Court of Auditors found final losses partly due to manipulation in the context of the scandal of 750 million francs. Prime Minister Barre insisted on receiving the only copy of the report, which was eventually destroyed in late 1982. The journalist Péan finally got a copy through a court order.
A French parliamentary commission of inquiry drew up a report in 1984 in which Giscard d'Estaing was exonerated, but Barre only partially. Mitterand had intervened, so the former Prime Minister Barre did not have to testify before the commission.
Bonassoli moved back to Italy, where he repaired televisions again in Lurano , while Villegas moved financially ruined to South America.