Today Dom and Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie confirmed “their common demand for truth and justice”. The article mentions that “Alliot-Marie’s offices were among those searched in the current investigation into who was behind the initial corruption charges”.
President Jacques Chirac — who some reports have implicated in the scandal— also met Friday with Alliot-Marie and the main target of the phony corruption charges, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, according to Chirac’s office.
First Dom was saying that Sarko’s name never came up; yesterday he said that (emphasis added)
“Sarkozy’s name was not mentioned in connection with this affair”
but that Sarkozy “was mentioned as interior minister.”
As readers of this blog know from reading Rondot’s deposition, (see link for General Rondot’s deposition, pdf file, in French),
M. Rondot says that at the meeting in M. Villepin’s office in the Foreign Ministry in January 2004, he was ordered to investigate politicians’ links with Clearstream. He says that M. Sarkozy’s name was repeatedly mentioned at the meeting. He says a list of Clearstream accounts produced at the meeting – the same one later sent to a judge and proved to be bogus – did contain M. Sarkozy’s name.
De Villepin clearly isn’t answering the 10 questions. Libération explains, in Question 4 (my translation),
What did Jean-Louis Gergorin [Executive Vice President of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS)] do during the January 9, 2004 meeting?
There’s no apparent reason for Jean-Louis Gergorin, member of the executive committee of EADS and Airbus executive, to be at that meeting. The Foreign Ministry has no jurisdiction over the aeronautical companies. And the business of the Taiwan frigates (Villepin’s reason for calling the meeting) does not have anything to do with EADS (Gergorin’s employer), but with Thompson, now Thales. Bear in mind that the two men are friendly since the beginning of the Eighties, when Gergorin recruited Villepin for the Center of analysis and forecast of the Foreign Ministry, which he [Gregorin] directed at the time. In April 2004, three months after this famous meeting, Villepin awarded the Legion of Honor to his friend. Gergorin is a specialist in matters of defense and intelligence. During the privatization of Thomson [the frigate contractor], this friend of Jean-Luc Lagardere had been sent as spokeman, with methods that some of its own camp regard “extreme”. According to General Rondot, it would be Gergorin who on that day had the famous list of people with Clearstream accounts — the same file that Gergorin had already forwarded to him as of October 2003.Question 5: Do you know where the Clearstream file came from?
Denis Robert, former Libération journalist, and author of two books denouncing the opacity of Clearstream, obtained several customer files showing well known international banks and other, less-known unregistered financial establishments [see translator’s note]. He admitted to have transmitted one of these listings, in March 2003, to Imad Lahoud, who worked for the DGSE (headed by General Rondot) and EADS. [Lahoud], a data processing specialist, was to shed some light on certain financial transactions. Does that mean it revealed as much as the final report who the beneficiares were (weapons industries, specialized services functionaries, politicians?) It’s insane to believe it revealed nothing. In any event, Gregorin, who once recruited Lahoud for EADS, pulled the list from his pocket in Villepin’s office.
[Translator’s note: From the context of the article I assume the financial establishments in question, unregistered in France, to be offshore accounts]
Yesterday and today Dom didn’t mention any of that. Instead we have De Villepin sick of slander and lies, just as he was last Tuesday.
Previous posts:
France: L’affaire Clearstream
L’affaire Clearstream: 10 questions for de Villepin
L’affaire Clearstream: the first question
(technorati tags Clearstream, France, Politics, Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin, Nicolas Sarkozy, UMP)
