L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree

being the maunderings of an Englishman on the Côte d'Azur

07 June 2006 Blog Home : June 2006 : Permalink

Clearstream - further developments

A couple of interesting developments. Firstly Imad Lahoud has been taken into custody (translation) and will probably be charged with handling the Clearstream list along with Gergorin and, presumably, with the addition of the false names to it. Secondly the source who provided Gergorin (Le Corbeau) and co with his documents has been reported to be Florian Bourges, a former Arthur Andersen employee (google translation).

It would seem that Mr Bourges was part of the team that investigated (radiographed?) Clearstream at the behest of the Luxembourg authorities in 2001 and that he then took advantage of his aquaintance with Imad Lahoud to get the latter to analyse the records seized then. Bourges also appears to have handed the list over to Denis Robert (see below). According to the Canard Enchaîné this analysis was done at the request of either Gergorin or General Rondot - the gentleman who fingered Vile Pin in his notes. What is unclear is who added the names of Sarko etc to the list.

All this is derived from the researches of journalist Denis Robert who is about to publish a book on the Clearstream investigation and which various defense lawyers are busily trying to stop being published. This explanation indicates that Clearstream was not "hacked" by Lahoud because the documents were extracted by Bourges as part of the official investigation, but there is considerable controversy here because, although Lahoud admits having met Bourges once for all of 15 minutes, his lawyer seems to be claiming that the information actually came from Denis Robert in 2003!

It must be noted here that if Bourges did indeed slip Lahoud/Gergorin/??? the details which eventually constituted part of the list sent to judge van Ruymbeke then it is almost certain that those names on it are likely to be the actual recipients of bribes that came from the Taiwanese frigate sale. In other words while Sarko and some of the other names were added maliciously the rest probably did take bribes and should be prosecuted assuming that other non-tainted evidence can be dug up to identify them.

It alse becomes really interesting to find out which other public figures had theit names falsely added to the list because this may help identify the motives behind the smear attempt. At present we only know of some of the names such as Sarko, Alain Gomez - former head of Thomson, Dominique Strauss-Kahn but others are rumoured to be included such as the magistrate Gilbert Flam who was dismissed from the secret service in 2002 after he started investigating l'Escroc's Japanese businesses. No one is saying out right but given the known links between Lahoud and l'Escroc - Lahoud's father in law is l'Escroc's former lawyer - and l'Escroc/Vile Pin and Gergorin, not to mention some of the identities known so far, but it is looking more and more plausible that l'Escroc was indeed involved in the smear camapign which means that the "Franch Watergate" tag is looking more and more accurate.


I despise l'Escroc and Vile Pin