Clearstream scandal to return to haunt Sarkozy

WMR has learned from informed sources that French President Nicolas Sarkozy will soon face renewed charges that he received illegal foreign funds through the Luxembourg banking company Clearstream. Luxembourg is a well-known tax haven that maintains strict confidentiality over banking and corporate records.

Then-French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met with the recently-retired head of French military intelligence Philippe Rondot and EADS deputy director Jean Louis Gergorin. Gergorin told de Villepin that two names on the secret list of French politicians who had Clearstream accounts -- Paul de Nagy and Stéphane Bosca -- were pseudonyms for Sarkozy. It was believed by French intelligence that the names came from Sarkoy's father's full name, Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarkösy de Nagy-Bosca.

Clearstream reportedly represented a massive money laundering operation that financed political and other operations around the world. Banks and companies with Clearstream accounts included the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Bank Menatep of jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Banco Ambrosiano (also known as the Vatican Bank), Bahrain International Bank (with reported links to Osama Bin Laden), and The Carlyle Group.

Sarkozy was Interior and, for a short time, Finance Minister in the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) government in which De Villepin served as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister.

Sarkozy's camp denounced the Clearstream list as a forgery and, as President, Sarkozy has put de Villepin under a criminal investigation. However, WMR has learned from sources close to France's General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) that Sarkozy's removal of Pierre Brochand,a Jacques Chirac appointee, as the head of DGSE in October will soon have unpleasant consequences for the mercurial Sarkozy.

DGSE classified documents could soon appear that will re-ignite the Clearstream affair and prove that Sarkozy's political career was financed by foreign funds. The revelations will reportedly exonerate de Villepin and Chirac, who have been charged by pro-Sarkozy elements in France of a criminal conspiracy to defame Sarkozy.

Sarkozy and his neocon allies were able to kill the story of Clearstream by lawsuits against journalists and criminal charges against French officials who were aware of the details of the case. An Excel spreadsheet of Clearstream accounts was removed from several web sites under threat of legal action. WMR obtained a copy of the 2002 spreadsheet.

The release of classified information on Clearstream may have repercussions far beyond France and shed light on an international quadrillion dollar scheme involving Israeli-connected gangsters to line the pockets of billionaires, launder cash, defraud banks, and loot national treasuries.

On February 5, 2008, WMR reported: "In the wake of the recent reports about former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' revelations that Turkish, Israeli, and Pakistani operatives worked with top members of the Bush administration to smuggle nuclear technology and also engaged in money laundering and drug smuggling, comes the astrounding revelations about the French bank Societe Generale SA and three other banks being involved in laundering money from a Paris garment district through Israel.

The revelations about SoGen follow the massive swindle by SoGen junior trading partner Jerome Kerviel that resulted in a $7.3 billion loss for the bank. Kerviel, who has been likened by some in France to the French Jewish Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus in the infamous "Dreyfus Affair," stands accused of falsification, computer abuse, and breach of trust.

SoGen, Barclays France, Societe Marseillaises de Credit (owned by HSBC), and the National Bank of Pakistan are accused of laundering money in what is known as the "Sentier 2 Affair." The Sentier district of Paris is a center for garment merchants. SoGen chairman Daniel Bouton, still reeling from the Kerviel fraud, is charged with failing to uphold anti-money laundering laws in the case. He is charged along with six French rabbis, and 132 other people in the money laundering scheme that 72 million euros was laundered from France via Israel from 1996 to 2001. Fraudulent French checks were cashed in Israeli banks and exchanged for New Israeli Shekels (NIS), and then returned to France via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) for clearance by the French banks. Israeli banks that handled the transactions received a commission for each transaction. However, no Israeli banks have been charged in the scandal . . .

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been unusually quiet on the Kerviel and Sentier 2 financial scandals. He likely wants no attention paid to the possible links between Kerviel, Sentier 2, and his own scandal that almost derailed his presidential candidacy: Clearstream.

On February 6, 2007, WMR reported: 'right-wing French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy received money from international American fugitive and Russian-Israeli Mafia kingpin Marc Rich, according to informed French sources. The money was transmitted through the Luxembourg-based Clearstream clearing division of Deutsche Borse. Sarkozy cleverly proclaimed his innocence in the French-Taiwan frigate bribery and money laundering affair, accusing French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of being behind a political dirty trick. However, in squawking loudly about his innocence in the Taiwan scandal, Sarkozy diverted attention away from his receipt of funds from the Russian-Israeli Mafia Clearstream accounts of Bank Menatep, the bank owned by jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Sarkozy, a committed neo-con who favors a hard line towards Arabs domestically and internationally, is reported to have received funds from Switzerland-based Marc Rich, via Menatep's Clearstream accounts, prior to and after Menatep's collapse in 1998. Menatep has been linked to a number of Russian-Israeli mafiosi figures, including Semyon Mogilevich, considered to be the most dangerous Russian-Israeli Mafia leader in the world. Rich's former attorney, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, is on trial in Washington, DC for perjury and obstruction of justice in the outing of a covert CIA officer.'

President Clinton pardoned Rich in a last minute deal worked out in January 2001, shortly before Clinton left office.

On January 30, Russian police arrested Mogilevich in Moscow and charged him with tax evasion. Mogilevich holds Russian as well as Israeli citizenship. In 2003, the US Justice Department indicted Mogilevich in Philadelphia and charged him and two associates with stock manipulation of the Pennsylvania firm YBM Magnex."

YBM Magnex was incorporated in Canada. The sizeable investments in the phony YBM Magnex by Canadian investment manager Sceptre Investment Counsel Ltd. resulted in a loss of investor confidence in the financial services firm and the departure of its top fund manager Allan Jacobs in 2007.

President-elect Barack Obama's selection of Clinton Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder as Attorney General will shine a new light on the Rich pardon. Holder approved the last-minute pardon for Rich in the waning days of the Clinton administration in January 2001.

Recently, the Canadian Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC) reported on a foreign spy operation in Canada that used a series of "folding tent" and brass plate corporations, as well as banks, to move move money and buy restricted commodities out of Canada. Canadian Tory and neocon quarters suggested that China, Iran, or Russia was the foreign spy agency cited by FINTRAC. There is strong evidence to suggest that the perpetrator was Israel's Mossad.

The FINTRAC investigation was part of a joint operation with U.S. authorities. The illegal transactions involved some $35 million, according to FINTRAC. In October, Israeli hacker Ehud Tenenbaum was arrested in Canada for the electronic theft of $1.8 million from a Calgary's Direct Cash Management Inc. Tenenbaum was arrested on a U.S. warrant for being involved in an international hacking ring that electronically looted money from banks in Russia, Turkey, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, and other countries.

In 1998, Tenenbaum, code-named "The Analyzer," broke into Pentagon computers. As part of his sentence, Tenenbaum was ordered to help "Israeli organizations" to protect themselves against cyber-attacks. Many informed computer security experts believe Tenenbaum went to work for Mossad.

Canada suspects that "white label" automatic teller machines (ATMs), privately-owned cash dispensing machines, are being used by the Russian-Israeli Mafia to engage in massive global money laundering. Tenenbaum and his associates withdrew money from credit and debit card accounts, to which money was illegally transferred, from ATM machines in Montreal and other cities.

In a scheme reminiscent of Bernard Madoff's $50 billion phony hedge fund Ponzi scheme run through his Madoff Securities in Manhattan, in September 2007, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) charged the founders of the bankrupt Portus Alternative Asset Management hedge fund with fraud. The two charged, Boaz Manor and Michael Mendelson, defrauded 26,000 Canadians and 700 foreign investors in Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bermuda, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, England, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Cyprus, the Isle of Jersey, and the United States of hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of the money was used by the pair to buy diamonds. Manor fled Canada to Israel in March 2005 and denied any wrongdoing.

If the DGSE begins leaking documents on the massive underground world of illegal money movements, Sarkozy could find himself facing a criminal trial.


On May 11, 2006, WMR reported: " . . . the recent attacks on de Villepin from the neo-cons are said to have more to do with his opposition to any attack on Iran than on Luxembourg money tranches. European intelligence sources report that the attacks on DeVillepin (and Chirac) and the recent tirade against Russian President Vladimir Putin by Vice President Cheney, are all part of a coordinated attack against European leaders who oppose military action against Iran. With the loss of Italy, the neo-cons are trying to establish new bridgeheads in France and Russia. What has particularly piqued the neo-con anger with deVillepin is this recent quote from the French Prime Minister concerning an attack on Iran, 'My conviction is that military action is certainly not the solution . . . We have already lived through this type of scenario and we know that not only does it settle nothing, but it can raise risks. We have seen this in the most clear way with Iraq.'

The neo-cons are using Clearstream and their man Sarkozy to hammer deVillepin as a way of clearing the path for Sarkozy to become the next French President. Neither deVillepin, Chirac, or the French intelligence services, all aware of Sarkozy's connections to the neo-cons, want to see the Interior Minister move into the Elysee Palace and steer France into the neo-con camp. DeVillepin is refusing to resign because he holds the trump card on Sarkozy and his friends, which include members of the neo-Nazi French National Front. Chirac recently said there are legitimate reasons to investigate Clearstream and lashed out at the neo-cons and their fellow travelers who are trying to sink the investigation of Sarkozy. Chirac said, 'Democracy is not the disrespect and exploitation to outrageous lengths of legal procedures under way.'"

UPDATE 1X. WMR has learned that the reported Chinese and Russian connections to the recent CSIS report that a foreign intelligence agency was illegally moving money electronically out of Canada is because Israeli intelligence operatives bought Russian and Chinese "off-the-shelf" companies to hide the Israeli connection to the caper. The operation, according to a well-placed WMR source, involves Canada's mining industry, particularly gold mining.