Clearstream affair

The Clearstream affair is a political affair in France that involves allegations of denunciation in connection with alleged black money deals. It got the name because of a judicial investigation that has been ongoing since 2001 into the Luxembourg clearing company Clearstream .

history

At the beginning of 2004 the examining magistrate Renaud van Ruymbeke was anonymously leaked a CD-ROM with over 16,000 accounts. This CD gave the impression that Clearstream had secret accounts. People who were involved in the ongoing sale of French frigates at the time are said to have control over these accounts . Thomson-CSF sold the ships to Taiwan .

The anonymous informer alleges that Clearstream, a subsidiary of Deutsche Börse , is a huge washing facility for black money from drug and armaments deals. In this money laundering facility, oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky , among others, would direct large companies in order to use them for money laundering . These oligarchs are responsible for the death of the former French Matra owner Jean-Luc Lagardère . Many of these allegations appeared in the books Révélation $ (2001) and La boîte noire (2002) by investigative journalist Denis Robert.

After a few months, the anonymous informant passed the coroner a file in which Clearstream records were linked to names and account numbers. In addition to Philippe Delmas, number 2 at Airbus , illustrious names such as that of the then finance minister and former president Nicolas Sarkozy , the former socialist ministers Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Jean-Pierre Chevènement and the UMP MP Alain Madelin appeared.

The examining magistrate was able to quickly rid Delmas of the suspicion because the original records had obviously been screened by the French foreign intelligence service DGSE for links to al-Qaida and manipulated in the process. The secret service is subordinate to the Ministry of Defense. Judge van Ruymbeke closed the file in December 2005.

2006

The interior minister at the time was Dominique de Villepin , Sarkozy's intimate enemy. The latter suspects him of abuse of office: on the pretext of state secrets, Villepin is said to have forbidden the competing secret service DST , under his control, to pass on an investigation report exonerating Sarkozy to the examining magistrate. In his book “La Tragédie du Président”, the journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert asserts that de Villepin cheered in the face of the circumstances and saw Sarkozy in the end. For his part, Sarkozy filed a complaint in January 2006. Another examining magistrate, Jean-Marie d'Huy, then tried to locate the "raven" (the anonymous informers).

House searches, including those of Airbus boss Gustav Humbert and Noël Forgeard , who had risen from presidential advisor Chirac to the top of EADS , were initially unsuccessful. The background to this was a managerial power struggle for positions in the French arm of EADS and Airbus, between the former Matra - Dassault branch of Airbus on the one hand and the former Thomson Thales - Alcatel branch of the company on the other. The office of the head of the DGSE, Alain Juillet, was also searched.

The head of the DST, which is under the Ministry of the Interior, Pierre de Bousquet, told Judge d'Huy that he did not know anything about the anonymous informant, but that de Villepin had instructed him to "find out what was behind this story". The examining magistrate found that the DST intelligence agents suspected that the Vice President of EADS, Jean-Louis Gergorin and one of his employees, a highly qualified computer scientist, were the wanted "ravens". As a result, EADS was also searched.

On the sidelines of the judicial investigation into this affair, the name of the French agent Philippe Rondot appeared. Rondot was the commanding officer of Imad Lahoud, who was introduced to DGSE in 2003 as a “freelancer”. Lahoud, nephew of syria friendly , Lebanese President Emile Lahoud , worked until the summer of 2003 in the investigation of the dark financial resources of Osama bin Laden . Rondot introduced Lahoud to EADS Vice President Gergorin. In March 2003, Lahoud met investigative journalist Denis Robert, who wanted to interview him on the Clearstream controversy. Lahoud is said to have given Robert computer lists from Clearstream. Gergorin and Lahoud emphatically deny having anything to do with the denunciation .

In a questioning by the two investigating judges, General Rondot testified under oath that on January 9, 2004, during his tenure as foreign minister, de Villepin instructed him to review Clearstream's lists of alleged foreign accounts. De Villepin does not deny this. According to Rondot, the conversation always revolved around Sarkozy. De Villepin gave the impression that he was acting on behalf and with the knowledge of President Chirac, which de Villepin denies as slander. Le Monde printed Rondot's statement on more than three newspaper pages and put almost the entire 28 A4-page statement from Rondot on the Internet. The satirical weekly newspaper “ Le canard enchaîné ” quoted Rondot as saying that Chirac himself had a balance of around € 45 million with a Japanese bank.

In May 2006, EADS Vice President Jean-Louis Gergorin admitted to authoring anonymous letters to coroners falsely suspecting Sarkozy and other politicians of taking bribes through secret accounts at Clearstream. Gergorin is suspended from his post at EADS.

Provisional end of the process

On October 20, 2009, the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office pleaded for 18 months suspended sentence for “complicity in defamatory denunciation” against Dominique de Villepin, two years in prison for Imad Lahoud and three years in prison for Jean-Louis Gergorin. The criminal court now had three months to deliberate. On January 28, 2010, the Paris court announced its decision. Dominique de Villepin was acquitted, Jean-Louis Gergorin received 15 months in prison and Imad Lahoud was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

literature

Denis Robert, Ernest Backes: The silence of money. The Clearstream scandal . Pendo-Verlag, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-85842-546-X . (German translation; French original title: Révélations )

Web links

Individual evidence

Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger of May 4, 2006: "The Prime Minister is in great need of explanations"
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger of May 11, 2006: "Government in Paris intensified under pressure"