Sunday, August 28, 2011

THE SPYMASTER OF MONTE CARLO 45: THE COMIC FARCE CONTINUES





O
n March 27th (2006), I felt rough, maybe a touch of flu, but patched myself with a shot of Famous Grouse whisky at Luton Airport and flew to Nice.

Back at
M-Base, I found the officers of SIGER disillusioned by the lack of any progress to enlarge their police intelligence unit, as approved by the Prince, and obstructed by Jean-Paul PROUST, his minister of state.

Three months had passed since the Prince left
M-Base with a written plan for this, a gung-ho it shall be done attitude; three months since he had commanded the minister of state to execute his wishes.

But PROUST had stalled for time, and then refused, and Albert, instead of tending to his principality by confronting such blatant insubordination, prepared instead for a retreat northward--an expedition to the North Pole--after having polyps removed from his vocal chords.

Jean-Luc ALLAVENA (JLA) had all but given up trying to compel PROUST to enlarge SIGER, as ordered, and, instead decided to wait until Paul MASSERON took up his duties as interior minister and get him to do it around PROUST.

On March 28th, I flew to a European capital for a meeting with officials of a foreign intelligence service. I was greeted at the airport, driven to a luxury hotel and checked in on their nickel, a courtesy shown to service chiefs. I presumed it also meant a camera and microphone in the TV set. (Everyone spies on everyone in the intelligence business.)

A few hours later, at four o’clock, we convened in a hotel conference room. The intelligence officials announced that they had detected a threat to the Prince’s rule within principality. It was, they said, coming from
The Clan i.e. The Monegasque Establishment.

“And you are known,” the intelligence official said to me. “It’s not a bad thing, as long as you know it,” he added. “Certain important persons have been touched by the Prince’s [anti-money laundering] activity.”

Someone, he said, had investigated during the period November into January and determined that “four units” (persons) under my direction were responsible for the crackdown.

The official did not perceive this as threatening, but felt those who had investigated were proud of themselves “for discovering the secret structure.” He also pointed out that Monaco is a “fiscal paradise,” and that my service to the Prince rendered it “less so.”

The official looked me straight in the eye. “Be careful,” he said, “and remember what Kojak said:
Know who loves you and who doesn’t.” He added, perhaps as a hint about who didn’t: “The French cannot be happy about an American doing this—it hurts their pride.”

He confirmed what I knew about deeply rooted organized crime in Monaco.

As for
Philip ZEPTER: “A whole book—no, a whole archive.”

The Prince had known for five years about ZEPTER—almost a year of that time as Sovereign, with power to do something about the Serbian’s presence in Monaco. Yet ZEPTER remained headquartered in the principality, an example to other services about why they should not take too seriously the Prince’s pledge to crack down on shady characters.

The official told me that members of his service were taking bets
not on whether I would make it through the year, but on who would eliminate me. These were the odds:

CIA: 100-1
Russian government: 20-1
Corsican terrorists (ASM football enquiries): 15-1
Freemasons: 10-1
Italian organized crime (“The Organization”): 5-1
Russian organized crime: 4-1
French government: 3-1
Monegasque establishment (“The Clan”): 2-1

Upon returning to Monaco, I discovered that PROUST, in his bid to stave off
Franck BIANCHERI ’s removal as finance minister, had leaked a false story to the Nice-Matin claiming that the Prince had refused to accept BIANCHERI’s resignation.

Then PROUST gave a media interview that, as JLA put it, “ran contrary to what he has been told about government changes. He has betrayed the Prince.”

Unfortunately, it had the effect of frightening my assets and informants, who could not understand why the Prince was not prevailing in the fight against corruption and criminality.

Instead, it was little victories for Albert, if actions that grated on the nerves of most Monegasques. One of the Prince’s first acts as Sovereign was to decree that the Flag of Monaco always fly above the Palace in daylight, even when he was not in Monaco--a departure from
Prince Rainier’spolicy, who had it removed when he was away.

Word reached me that Monegasques perceived this new measure as a symbol of avoidance; it seemed to them a device to conceal the Prince’s frequent absences from the principality.

Or, as one of my Monegasque informants put it: “He’s avoiding us. And now he thinks he’s fooling us.”

It was clear little could be done until the fundamentals were right. And the one wrong fundamental was the minister of state. PROUST had to be replaced with a
prime minister who would execute the Prince’s program; someone who understood that the Palace was in charge of Monaco’s destiny, not the government--and respect that the government’s function is to put into place the Prince’s plan.

Only with a new minister of state, I was certain, could the Prince move forward, and against those engaged in corrupt, criminal activities.

When I spoke with the Prince by phone at ten past nine on the evening of March 30th, I replayed the DST Director’s question: “Why doesn’t the Prince choose his own minister of state?” (One of the Prince’s concerns had been, “What would the French think?” Now he knew.)

But the Prince replied: “Out of respect to my father.”

“It wasn’t your father,” I said. “The people
around your father chose PROUST—and now they’re glad they did.”

But by now I understood, all these many months later, that “what will the French think?” and “out of respect for my father” was simply the Prince’s code for:
I don’t have the cojones to take control.

LIDDY tried to put it into perspective when I met him in
M-Base on April 6th. He said the French special services believed BIANCHERI andPhilippe NARMINO had something on the Prince. Otherwise, it made no sense to them that BIANCHERI was still finance minister and NARMINO had become chief of judicial services. Moreover, LIDDY claimed that French special services believed PROUST and BIANCHERI had embarked on a campaign to make the Prince’s new ethic look “foolish,” as a means of discrediting his general policies, and thus neutering his ability to rule.

I truly appreciated a front row seat in this theatrical comic-drama-farce.

Every time I felt like bailing, I reminded himself that spectators pay good money for this kind of entertainment.