JPK witness case adjourned for ninth time
An open letter for Oscar Manutahi Temaru
how golden is silence in france?
20100507 taiwan france clearstream affaire |
How golden is French silence?
EDITORIAL
Deafening silence from Paris regarding nearly one billion Euros in court fines illustrate the width and depth of corruption that faces continued inquiries into disappearance of a former Pape'ete editor.
Neither left or right wing parties commented on fines for bribes associated with the 1991 sale of French frigates to Taiwan.
President Nicolas Sarkozy refused to comment about the court fines.
So too did the opposition.
News about the heavy fines broke during usually raucous question time – a time which recently saw opposition singing of the national anthem as a symbolic protest – for the first time in half a century.
No such patriotism for the frigate affair.
"The beneficiaries of fraudulent commission payments in China and Taiwan, some made in France, remained unknown because of military secrecy", reports Reuters news agency.
During the 2000s, military intelligence opposed requests from French investigating judges Renaud Van Ruymbeke and Xaviere Simeoni, appointed by the Ministry of Finance under left wing minister, Laurent Fabius, and the right, Francis Mer and Thierry Breton.
Intelligence officials refused to hand over lists of the recipients of commercial commissions, reported in 1991 by Thale and DCN, the state Directorate of Naval Construction, as under a procedure then required.
As Sarkozy backs off plans to remove investigatory powers from judges, the lack of response from all sides of the political spectrum raises questions about just how golden silence really is in France.
And how much information former Pape'ete editor Jean Pascal Couraud had in his possession when he disappeared in 1997.
Meantime, local media in Tahiti appear to have stopped referring to links between Pascal and multiple investigations involving widespread corruption involving the military and foreign affairs, including Clearstream.
LINKS
Silence politique en France sur l'affaire des frégates
Sarkozy renoncerait à la réforme de la justice avant 2012
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long missing editor still centre mega scandal
Former Papeete editor Jean Pascal Couraud today remains at the centre of French political megascandal – 12 years after he went missing.
Just yesterday, the judge investigating the disappearance of Couraud made his third formal request to courts in Japan.
"Investigations have revealed a significant financial transaction from Polynesia to Japan, during a economically and legally questionable property deal, conducted in 1995 among a group of investors led by Tahitian Reginald Flosse, son of Gaston Flosse, and Japanese businessmen in the EIE Resort Group," Justice Jean-François Redonnet is quoted as saying by Le Monde daily.
He is asking for more information regarding a once secret bank accounts held by former French president, Jacques Chirac, and his French Polynesian counterpart, Gaston Flosse.
At the same time, Redonnet issued instructions to police to look up FICOBA records for evidence of any Chirac bank accounts between 1996 and 2002.
Previous requests to Japan courts have seen officials at the Tokyo Sawa Bank say they could not find details for any accounts prior to 1999.
Meantime, Flosse, the man at the centre of allegations surrounding the disappearance of Couraud saw his party re-elected to power last week – from a jail cell.
Flosse was detained for questioning on corruption charges.
However the majority of just one vote has been called into question because Flosse cannot attend sittings of the territorial assembly.
Jean Pascal Couraud went missing on a full moon Monday night, 15th December 1997.
Hours before he disappeared, Jean Pascal Couraud had been set to expose links to the world's biggest banking scandal.
JPK has not been seen since then.
His body has not been found.
Couraud's disappearance helped cover up what leading French judges call the "black box" of global finance – Clearstream.
Including a truly astonishing us$1.5 trillion in "false assets", L'Affaire Clearstream is the French version of the US Enron scandal – 1000 times larger.
Questions remain.
Where Enron in the US went into meltdown with us$14 billion, Clearstream is an unexploded dirty bomb centring around "false assets".
Clearstream is at least thirty times bigger than the Madoff scandal – and that was back in 2001, almost a decade ago.
An official police inquiry into JPK dates back to October 2004.
doubts over clearstream witness
By Philippe Madelin | Journaliste | 07/10/2009 | 10H58
An observation about my colleagues talking about a witness, Rondot, at the Clearstream trial. It is horrifying to hear the journalists, including radio, on a repeating loop: "General Rondot, the master spy".
We can talk about master spy Vetrov or Commander Paul in the Farewell affair. Not for Rondot, who began his "spy" career by getting fired from the SDECE for carelessness when stationed in Bucharest, before being rehired by Pierre Joxe as an advisor at the Ministry of Defense.
The least of his errors were of little note throughout his life, taking notes in order to compile a service history of army.
Moreover, by his own admission, Rondot dislikes being called a spy; he prefers "intelligence officer". Do his colleagues really know the difference?
In the process, they relate a series of exploits. Including the arrest of "Illich Ramirez Sanchez, alias Carlos to Khartoum. Forgetting to clarify that Carlos has been rolled by the CIA to the former DST, the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance.
Banned from foreign missions, the DST could not lead an open operation.
Never mind: the DST tasked Rondot with covering the operation. The Sudanese secret service, glad to get rid of Carlos, crammed him with sleeping pills. In other words, "Carlos the Jackal" was delivered, bound hand and foot, for French officers to come and pick him up.
The 'official' version is typical of this curious general. Most exploits about Rondot draw from the same barrel. He has extensively popularized his role without worrying too much about evidence.
Suggesting that only he could succeed where the whole team failed.
The secret account of Chirac in Japan
Ok, one last thing for the road: the case of Chirac's secret account in Japan. Concerned about his police career, Rondot was the main informant for the press in this case. The Chirac account has even been investigated in Japan, he said. Which is possible, too. He found nothing consistent, while suggesting that there was a catch.
But, as Nicolas Beau reported in Bakhich info, when Rondot was interviewed 3rd June by Jean Francois Redonnet, a judge from Tahiti, and asked to clarify his thinking, Rondot agreed (in minutes) that he held no credible evidence. Nicolas Beau wrote:
"[Questions from the judge] are accurate, point by point, against the digressions and smokescreens of the visibly embarrassed General. So, the questioning turns assassin for Rondot who recants, contradicts himself and fails to provide any consistency as to his role in this affair over a Japanese account .
The judge tries, ten years after the fact, to discover the cause of a possible assassination of journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud, who was investigating the assets of Flosse and Chirac in Japan. "
Nicolas Beau deservers even more credit for publishing this information as he was himself a great paragon of this secret Japanese account affair, devoting an entire book.
If you read the detailed account of the Clearstream trial by Pascal Junghans in The Tribune this Monday, October 5, you will find that Rondot continues to show fuzzy, uncertain, contradictory evidence, based on his own notes which have little legal value.
So when we called Rondot Master Spy, it is necessary to question the journalists who continue to follow the same legend.
It is true that "Master Spy" sounds better than "intelligence officer".
Read also Rue89 and Eco89
Elsewhere on the Web
- ► Rondot, a master spy trial Clearstream on LeFigaro.fr
- ► Clearstream Trials: the master spy charge Villepin, on the Dépêche.fr
- ► Clearstream: a master spy waiting at the bar on LeParisien.fr
shaking the trees
Perhaps, he mused, the novel could be a radical, risky combo of fact and fiction.
Could be a simple bluff. Publish rumours, anecdote, speculation. Outright sensationalism. See what shakes out from the trees. Some see right through it. Others might give a lead, a tip, a leak, maybe even a whole fat dossier. Might be made up, it might not. Might make some lucky guesses.
Censorship angles, possible shutdown, research safe haven options. Always have back up.
. . .
about who killed jpk
ABOUT
This is an exploratory blog.
Part of agency efforts to find the easiest way to write a novel online, publishing updates as you go.
With as little fuss as possible between publishing online and publishing offline via digital printerys. Large rooms with millions of copies of dozens of different templates, all blank, waiting for someone to click on buy and automatically trigger a custom book - including hard cover.
LINKS
http://www.lulu.com/
http://www.cafepress.com/
http://www.cafepress.com.au/ (for Asia Pacific)
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nightmare
Long shafts of white, swelling, gently.
A lull, a calm, a magic, a vague sense.
Impending doom.
. . .
Again. And again.
Nightmare, second nature.
"Many people told us they have dreams," says a colleague, fatigued.
. . .
question is who killed jpk
Light slides by,
train windows by night,
rippling o'er river roil.
. . .