Information AboutClearstream |
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ACCUSATIONS In 2001, Investigative Reporter Denis Robert and Ernest Backes , executive at Cedel until May 1983, published a book, "Revelation$", in which they alleged Clearstream played a major part in the Underground Economy , was a main platform of Money Laundering for hundreds of banks, and that "Clearstream operated hundreds of confidential Accounts for banks so they could move money undetected", according to Business Week 1 . Backes and '' Le Figaro '' were found guilty of libel on March 29 , 2004 after a successful suit by Clearstream; however, the case is due to be heard in Appeal Court in 2006, and all financial demands of Clearstream were rejected by the judges, who considered the information revealed to be "serious and cross-checked, deprived of animosity and expressed with caution". After the opening of an investigation in Luxembourg under the suspicion of money-laundering, tax evasion and other frauds, Clearstream's CEO, André Lussi, resigned ( See Below ). This supposedly enabled Deutsche Börse to purchase the remaining 50% of Clearstream International in July 2002. According to some, such as ''Business Week'', Lussi had opposed such a takeover. Following the July 2004 anonymous denounciations about personal secret accounts allegedly detained by important French political figures, Volker Potthoff , member of Deutsche Börse's board, was charged of an audit and control mission about Clearstream. A long-time member of the German Stock Exchange (aka Deutsche Börse), Volker Potthof was surprised by what he found in Luxembourg and proposed harsher measures concerning the firm's clustomers and the control of the accounts. However, Jeffrey Tessler , also a member of Deutsche Börse's board and current responsible for Clearstream, asked him to resign. Volker Potthof thereby departed in January 2006 and will officially cease his functions on June 30 , 2006 2 CLEARING Clearstream has often been described as a bank of banks, as it practices what is called '' Financial Clearing ''. Basically, its duty is to record each transaction between the accounts of different banks, and using that data to calculate the relative financial positions of banks with regard to each other. So a bank can just order a transaction between their account and the other bank's account in lieu of less secure methods like carrying a case full of currency or securities around; it merely transmits an order to Clearstream to credit/debit one of their own accounts and their counterpart bank's account(s). This general kind of system is in use between regular companies, and governments, and banks around the world. The purpose of Clearstream is to in 1968 in Brussels (Belgium). By the end of 2000 , JP Morgan had extricated itself from Euroclear, but JP Morgan is still one of the 120 international banks to owns share in Euroclear. In 2000, Euroclear processed 145 million transactions in 2000, dealing with in total, 100,000 billions euros 4 . "$1.5 trillion math errors" According to ''Business Week'', "Clearstream, which handles the back-office paperwork for some 40% of European Stock and Bond trades, was found to have overstated its assets in custody by $1.5 trillion. (It has $6.5 trillion.) If Clearstream makes $1.5 trillion math errors, customers are understandably nervous - and some have moved to rival Euroclear." . According to investigative journalist Lucy Komisar , Clearstream is audited by KPMG , one of the world global accounting firms. KPMG declared that it found "no evidence" to support the allegations made by Denis Robert and Ernest Backes, though its report was not made public. Clearstream's dominant position On June 2 , 2004 , the European Commission found "that Clearstream Banking AG and its parent company Clearstream International SA (“Clearstream”) infringed competition rules by refusing to supply cross-border securities clearing and settlement services and by applying discriminatory prices. The Commission’s investigation revealed that Clearstream refused to supply Euroclear Bank SA (“Euroclear Bank”) with certain clearing and settlement services and applied discriminatory prices to the detriment of this customer." The decision states that "Clearstream refused to supply to Euroclear Bank clearing and settlement services for Registered Shares issued under German law", underlining the "dominant position" of Clearstream since it "is the only final custodian of German securities kept in collective safe custody, which is the only significant form of custody today for securities traded. New entry into this activity is unrealistic for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Clearstream is an unavoidable trading partner." The Commission defined '' Clearing '' and '' Settlement '' as follow: :"Securities clearing and settlement are necessary steps for a securities trade to be completed. Clearing Settlement :Clearstream Banking AG is Germany's only '' Wertpapiersammelbank '' ( Central Securities Depository ). The Commission considered that during the reference period concerned, 1997 through 2001, Clearstream held a dominant position for providing cross-border clearing and settlement services to intermediaries situated in other Member States. The investigation therefore focused on a specific cross-border market and the decision does not set out findings that go beyond that relevant market." It underlined in a note that "Central Securities Depositories hold securities and enable securities transactions to be processed through book entry. In its home country, the Central Securities Depository provides processing services for trades of those securities that it holds in final custody. It can also offer processing services as an intermediary in cross-border clearing and settlement, where the primary deposit of securities is in another country." CONTROVERSY Daewoo shutdown inquiries After Daewoo was split apart in the year 2000, Clearstream was the subject of two commissions of inquiry in Lorraine (France) conducted before the French Parliament and European Parliament ). "The greatest financial scandal in Luxembourg" In 2001, "'' of deliberately suppressing articles and reviews of his book, suggesting that financial links between "''Le Monde''" and ''Deutsche Börse'', (which now owns 100% of Clearstream's shares) were the cause of this censorship. Denis Robert described Clearstream as a huge money laundering and tax evasion machine, used by major banks, Shell Companies and Organized Crime all over the world. Clearstream's alleged criminal activities used an informatic system of unpublished accounts, which was revealed to Denis Robert by Ernest Backes and Régis Hempel, vice-president of Clearstream who, as an informatician, had help up set up the system in the 1970s. Eurodollars Cedel (now Clearstream) and Euroclear were started to manage transfers of " Eurodollars ", U.S. currency kept in banks outside the United States. Eurodollars were invented by the Chinese and the Soviets in the 1950s so they would not have to put their assets in banks where the US government could seize them. By the 1990s, the Federal Reserve estimated that about 2/3 of U.S. currency was held abroad as eurodollars. Cedel and Euroclear later expanded into operating transfers of stock titles and other financial instruments. In 1975 , several big Italian and German banks wanted to centralize their Accounting so that other members of Cedel directly sent them transfers to the main branch. "The Cedel council of administration - its Board Of Directors - authorized banks with multiple Subsidiaries not to put all their accounts on the list. Backes and Gérard Soisson, then Cedel's general manager, set up a system of non-published accounts (...) Requests for non-published accounts came from some banks that weren't eligible, but Soisson turned them down", writes Komisar 5 (by investigative reporter Lucy Komisar ) . Banco Ambrosiano scandal By 1980, Ernest Backes had become Cedel's #3, in charge of relations with clients, but he was fired in May 1983, allegedly because he "knew too much about the Ambrosiano Scandal ", one of Italy's major political scandals. Two months after his dismissal, Gérard Soisson was found dead in Corsica. The Banco Ambrosiano, allegedly involved in money-laundering for the mafia and owned in majority by the Vatican Bank , collapsed in 1982. It "laundered drugs- and arms-trafficking money for the Italian and American mafias and, in the 1980s, channeled Vatican money to the Contras in Nicaragua and Solidarity in Poland", according to Komisar. As of 2005, while the Italian justice has opened up again the investigation concerning the murder of Roberto Calvi , Ambrosiano's chairman, it has asked the support of Ernest Backes, and will investigate Gerard Soisson's death, according to Komisar. Licio Gelli , headmaster of Propaganda Due masonic lodge (aka P2, it was involved in Gladio 's " Strategy Of Tension " starting from the 1969 Piazza Fontana Bombing ), and mafiosi Giuseppe Calo , are being prosecuted for the assassination of Roberto Calvi. Ernest Backes explained: ''"When Soisson died, the Ambrosiano affair wasn't yet known as a scandal. (After it was revealed) I realized that Soisson and I had been at the crossroads. We moved all those transactions known later in the scandal to Lima and other branches. Nobody even knew there was a Banco Ambrosiano branch in Lima and other South American countries."'' Secret accounts and workings of modern 21st century economy Gérard Soisson, murdered in July 1983, was the one to authorize each non-published account, "which would be known only by some insiders, including the auditors and members of the council of administration". "With Soisson out of the way, there was nothing to stop the abuse of the system, wrote Lucy Komisar. Whereas Soisson had refused numerous requests to open non-published accounts (from such institutions as Chase Manhattan in New York, the Chemical Bank of London and numerous subsidiaries of Citibank ), Cedel opened hundreds of non-published accounts in total irregularity - especially after the arrival of CEO André Lussi in 1990. No longer were they just sub-accounts of officially listed accounts, Backes charges. Some were for banks that weren't subsidiaries or even official members of Cedel. At the start of 1995, Cedel had more than 2,200 published accounts. But in reality, according to documents obtained by Backes, Cedel that year managed more than 4,200 accounts.", leading to an alleged total of 2 000 unpublished accounts in 1995. Régis Hempel, vice-president of Cedel, explained to the Paris '' Tribunal De Grande Instance '' how the system of unpublished accounts was generalized, allowing all types of illegal operations; Clearstream, during the courtsuit against Denis Robert for "defamation", did not deny it ('' See Below ''). According to Hempel, some dormant accounts were activated for special transactions: "Such an account can be opened in the morning, used for a transaction, and closed to appear as delisted in the evening", Backes explains. "Only the guy who gave the order to open it in the morning knows about the transaction. An investigator or auditor would not look at such an account because it doesn't appear on the accounts list". Among the major companies with unpublished accounts, Backes discovered the Shell Petroleum Group and the Dutch agricultural firm Unilever , one of whose accounts was associated with Goldman Sachs . "By 2000, according to Backes, Clearstream managed about 15 000 accounts (of which half were non-published) for 2 500 clients in 105 countries; most of the investment companies, banks and their subsidiaries are from Western Europe and the United States. Most of the new non-published accounts were in Offshore Tax Havens . The banks with the most non-published accounts are Banque Internationale De Luxembourg (309), Citibank (271) and Barclays (200) (...) On the April 2000 Clearstream list, there are 37 Colombian accounts, of which only three are published. " German multinational Siemens had four non-published accounts, while Crédit Lyonnais bank had 23 and Japanese Nomura 12 6 . Although an investigation was opened up against Clearstream in France and Luxembourg, and an European Parliamentary report on money-laundering denounced Luxembourg's financial activities, taking in particular the example of Clearstream, in the absence of any real threat to its workings, Clearstream continued to use unpublished accounts. According to Denis Robert, in 2001, a year before being bought back by Deutsche Börse, '''Clearstream managed 330 000 unpublished accounts''' 7 . This system of unpublished accounts made it possible to hide money for the purposes of Money Laundering , Tax Evasion , Accounting Manipulation and fraud. It was used by a large variety of banks, among them Columbian banks linked to the Drug Cartel , Bank Menatep involved in the " Kremlingate ", the French Credit Lyonnais involved in a major crash in the 1990s, and Osama Ben Laden 's Bahrain International Bank . The money from the Taiwan Frigates French scandal transited by Clearstream, as did the money from Elf Oil Company (both being major financial scandals which shook France in the 1990s). Clearstream also held part of the Argentine Debt which led to the December 2001 Riots . Numerous unpublished accounts were owned by Argentine companies and by the Citibank , which managed a large part of Argentine funds. Another revelation of Denis Robert's book, according to the May 9, 2001 op-ed by Bernard Bertossa , attorney general in Geneva , Benoît Dejemeppe , king's attorney in Bruxelles (''procureur du roi''), Eva Joly , Investigative Magistrate in Paris, Jean De Maillard , magistrate in Blois and Renaud Van Ruymbeke , judge in Paris, titled "The 'black boxes' of financial globalization" is that: "The chaos of financial flux is only an appearance. Of course, , Glyn Ford and Francis Wurtz press statement about the $1.5 trillion math error & Denis Robert and Ernest Backes' book "Revelation$" and a May 9, 2001 op-ed in '' Le Monde '' titled "''Les 'boîtes noires' de la mondialisation financière''" ("The black box of financial globalization") by Bernard Bertossa , attorney general in Geneva , Benoît Dejemeppe , king's attorney in Bruxelles (''procureur du roi''), Eva Joly , Investigative Magistrate in Paris, Jean De Maillard , magistrate in Blois and Renaud Van Ruymbeke , judge in Paris) In other words, all financial flux, legal or illegal, have to pass through Clearstream or Euroclear; the system of un-published accounts, of which a few (less than 10%) were also found at Euroclear, is the way illegal funds are metamorphosed, as by the Philosopher's Stone , in legal funds which can be used to buy any financial service. Michel Volle, economist and former INSEE administrator, has compared this financial system to famous historian Marc Bloch 's description of predation in the Middle Ages, in his book ''Feudal Society'' (1961): I believe that the actual economy is composed by two types of relations: balanced exchanged, where both parties have the same power to refuse or accept the transaction; and predation, where one of the party is in the position to impose the transaction to the other party. Predation, compensed by Charity , is the typical feudal relation (cf. Marc Bloch, ''The Feudal Society''). Balanced exchange has been put in place with the industrial society at the beginning of the 18th century. Predation didn't disappear at this time - the mafia is a feudal organization - but it was in the industrial economy an archaïc remnant. But it is coming back with the automated and computerized economy which founds the actual technic system and in which risk and violence, both extreme, goes in pair (cf. my work "E-conomie" and also F.-X. Verschave , ''Noir Silence''). Therefore, the economy has divided itself in two parts, one working under the balanced exchange regime, and the other under the predation regime. Shakespeare's heroes are coming back! The interface between these two parts is money-laundering, which allows the results of predation to enter the "normal" and legal circuit. Thereby, predators can acquire influence ( Controls Of The Media and, through them, governments), prestige and honorability ; thus bankers, politicians and magistrates that the predators have bought may enjoy in complete tranquillity of the fruits of corruption... This, and not the First Employment Contract , should have provoqued The Demonstrations ! But, as you say, medias are what predators control the best". 8 A "black box" of Cedel Ernest Backes also explained that a company called Cedel International, located in Geneva , had been inscribed in the Swiss register of commerce but not included in the books of the mother company, Cedel International in Luxembourg. "This non-consolidated 'branch', whose president is Robert Douglass of New York, former private secretary of Governor Nelson Rockefeller , is now vice chairman of the Chase Manhattan Corporation [now J.P. Morgan Chase ] , had apparently not raised too many questions for Swiss federal magistrates". Backes qualified this "black box" as "institutionalized tax evasion at highest level in world finance", noting that tax evasion was even "more or less expressed in the objectives of the company as filed in the Swiss register of commerce." The 'branch' has since "been resold to another Luxembourg holding company, with the people in the backyard remaining mostly the same." Juridical investigations & libel courtsuits Following the publication of "Revelation$", the tribunal of Luxembourg opened up an investigation on "Termin" (futures) Market . Furthermore, the cable stated that Clearstream successfully sued Backes and French newspaper "'' Le Figaro ''" for libel on March 29 , 2004 , but deliberately failed to follow up the initial October 1 , 2003 judgements ('' See Below ''). Ironically, Reuters quoted Deutsche Börse's Chairman Designate André Roelants as stating that "this announcement is very important as it closes once and for all this chapter." The December 1, 2004 Reuters article (11:27:47) was authored by gilles.castonguay.reuters.com@reuters.net (Tel. +32 2 287 6810, Fax +32 2 230 77 10 belgium.newsroom@reuters.com) . In 2003, the Paris Court rejected all of the finance company's requests (Clearstream was seeking damages of 500,000 Euros because of "defamation"), and condemned Clearstream to pay 3 500 Euros to Denis Robert Paris ''Tribunal de Grande Instance'' court decision, dated October 1, 2003, condemning Clearstream to pay 3 500 Euros to Denis Robert . The magistrates considered that the informations revealed on the activities of money-laundering by Clearstream were ''"serious and cross-checked, deprived of animosity and expressed with caution"'' / 11; 12 . The suit is due to be examined by the Appeal Court in 2006 . Denis Robert has also been sued for defamation by others banks and companies incriminated by the book (50+ different cases - among whom '' magazine that "By transforming the affair Robert in affair Frieden (famous Luxembourgian Minister of Justice, of the Treasury and the Budget), every signature will be a civil act which protects the freedom of the media in Europe." 13 ( petition available here ) Suspension and prosecution of Clearstream's CEO On May 15, 2001 , André Lussi , CEO of Clearstream, was suspended of his functions, before being definitely dismissed on December 31th, 2001 14 15 . On February 2004 , an investigation was opened against him, under the suspicions of money-laundering, fraud and other tax evasion charges 16 / 17 . André Lussi was replaced by André Roelants , who was before with Dexia . Refusal of the European Commission to open up an investigation: ''20 Minutes'' ' revelations With Ernest Backes, Denis Robert presented ''Revelation$'' to the Capital Tax, Fiscal Systems And Globalization intergroup of the European Parliament in March 2001 and also to the French National Assembly . The European Commission did not react to the question raised by European MPs (MEP) Harlem Désir , Glyn Ford and Francis Wurtz , who asked the Commission to investigate the accusations brought forward by the book and to ensure that the 10 June 1990 Directive (91/308 CE) on control of financial establishment be applied in all member states in an effective way. Commissioner Frits Bolkestein applied that ''"the Commission has no reason to date to believe that the Luxembourg authorities do not apply it vigorously".'' (''sic'') The three MPs henceforth published a press statement asking the opening of an investigation by the European Union about the correct application of the June 10, 1990 directive . On April 26 , 2006 , daily '' 20 Minutes '' revealed that "in May 2005, MEP Paul Van Buitenen was shocked by Frits Bolkestein's presence to Menatep 's international consultative council, a sulfurous Russian banking establishment, and by his work for Shell , British-Dutch petrol company. Two firms 'detaininng secret accounts in Clearstream' ... Van Buitenen, also Dutch, then asked for 'clarification' to the European Commission and the opening of a parliamentary investigation. The Commission's president, José Manuel Barroso , answered that these facts "don't bring up any new question" and that it is not known "if Menatep took contact with Bolkestein while he was in his functions". No investigation thereby took place." The free daily underlines that "in 2001, it was Bolkestein himself that announced the Commission's refusal to open up a parliamentary investigation on Clearstream", following Harlem Désir's requests and accusations that Menatep had an "undeclared account" at Clearstream. Bolkestein refused to answer any questions by the newspaper, which recalls that Van Buitenen, former European public servant, had already revealed a vast corruption affair in 1999, which led to the resignation of the Commission presided by Jacques Santer (who has also been prime minister of Luxembourg) and the fall of Edith Cresson 18 . Furthermore, two Belgian Senators, Isabelle Durant and Jean Cornil , deposed a law proposition in 2004 in order to create a national investigation commission that would be charged of the investigation about the use of accounts in "clearing and routing firms" to the aims of fiscal frauds (tax evasion) and/or money-laundering 19 (provides link to PDF reports about Frits Bolkestein response to Harlem Désir and others MEP's question, as well as José Manuel Durão Barroso 's response to Paul Van Buitenen and to the law proposition of Belgian senators Isabelle Durant and Jean Cornil Clearstream's reply In April 2006, while the second "Clearstream affair" was beginning to make French medias' headlines ( See Below ), Clearstream deposed a lawsuit against X targeting this time not Denis Robert nor Ernest Backes (Régis Hempel, the former vice-president and informatician who revealed how he had set up the system of unpublished accounts, was never targeted by Clearstream's lawsuits), but the anonymous denounciations claiming that Nicolas Sarkozy and other French political personalities had secret accounts at Clearstream, which would have been used for hypothetical kickbacks. Furthermore, it accepted to answer to the questions of '' 20 Minutes ''. In this interview, it denied knowing anything about the various tentatives to create at the European level investigations commissions about its internal workings. It also denied "the existence of parallel accounts" and of "personal accounts" (in response, Denis Robert published on his blog a list of several personal accounts 20 ). However, the firm did recognize that "a banking establishment may ask to have an unpublished account, that is an account only known by the establishments concerned by the transaction, control authorities, and the audit firms of the firm". Clearstream also claims having "spent 15 million of euros of various audits to examine, without founding anything", Denis Robert's accusations 21 . Nadhmi Auchi, largest private share-holder of BNP Paribas bank Strangely, Iraqi-born Iraq. Moreover, as owner of the General Mediterranean Holdings , Auchi is the largest private share-holder of BNP Paribas , which until 2001 had the Escrow account through which the money from the Oil-for-Food Programme transited. Bank Menatep Bank Menatep, owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky , was involved in the " Kremlingate ", when $4.8 billions IMF funds were diverted to various banks, including US banks See former World Bank vice-president Joseph Stiglitz , chapter on Russia in "'' Globalization And Its Discontents ''" . It opened up its non-published Cedel account #81 738 on May 15 , 1997 . "Menatep further violated the rules because many transfers were of cash, not for settlement of securities", writes Komisar. "For the three months in 1997 for which I hold microfiches, Backes says, only cash transfers were transferred through the Meanatep account. They were a lot of transfers between Menatep and the Bank Of New York ." Natasha Gurfinkel Kagalovsky, a former Bank of New York official and the wife of Menatep vice president, was accused of helping launder at least $7 billions from Russia, according to Komisar. US investigators have attempted to find out if some of the laundered money originated with Menatep. On November 26, 2003, Backes and another ex-banker, Swiss citizen André Strebel, filed a criminal complaint with the Swiss attorney general against Khodorkovsky and his colleagues Platon Lebedev and Alexei Golubovich , accusing them of money laundering and supporting a criminal organization. They asked the opening of an investigation and the research of records of the Swiss office of Menatep SA; Menatep Finances SA and Valmet and of Bank Leu in Geneva related to investigative claims of Fraud against the Russian company Avisma and money laundering by Menatep in Switzerland. According to this complaint, Bank Menatep has been linked since its creation to the Russian Oligarchy and criminal organizations, such as Khodorkovsky, Alexander Konanykhine and the Russian Godfather Semyon Mogilvich . "Even though Menatep officially failed in 1998 , it oddly remained on the non-published list of Clearstream account for 2000", wrote Komisar. Clearstream's listings also present 36 other Russian accounts, most non-published // 23 . In April 2006, Clearstream declared to the French edition of '' 20 Minutes '' that if "Menatep may have strange accounts, it wasn't closed because of money-laundering". It also claimed that it treated with "banks accredited in their country of origin", but not with "establishments that are registered on the Financial Action Task Force On Money Laundering 's black list" . The Second Clearstream Affair The Second Clearstream affair has interested more the media than the explosive revelations, although incidentally it pushed Clearstream to some public communication. This affair started in July 2004, when anonymous denounciations sent to magistrate Renaud Van Ruymbeke accused various very important political French figures of having received kickbacks related to the Taiwan frigates scandal through secret personnal accounts at Clearstream. Once more, Clearstream was pointed at as a major platform for illegal financial transactions. The Taiwan frigates scandal In 1991, France sold six frigates to Taiwan, which led to more than five billion Francs of kickbacks, with intermediary Andrew Wang as a major figure. This huge amounts of kickbacks made this affair one of the most important French political and financial scandals of the 1990s. The kickbacks were exposed after the 1993 murder of naval captain Yin Ching-Feng, who had written a critical report on the purchase, worth $2.8 billions. Eight deaths have been linked to the affair, and 13 military officers and 15 arms dealers were sentenced by Taiwan courts to between eight months and life in prison for bribery and leaking military secrets 24 25 . The money for these illegal percentage fee transited through Clearstream, according to Denis Robert. Jöel Bucher's testimony Following the publication of "''Revelation$''", Joël Bucher, former deputy general director of the Taiwan branch of Société Générale (SG), wrote to Luxembourg prosecutor Carlos Zeyen, investigating Clearstream, to testify that SG used Clearstream to hide bribes and to launder money. "In the early 1990s, Bucher contends, Cedel was used to launder $350 million in illegal 'commissions' on a contract for the sale by Thomson-CSF , a French government arms company, of six French frigates to Taiwan. HE said that the money, handled by a SG subsidiary, was paid as a registered securities transfer to a 'nominee' - a stand-in for the real beneficiary - and that Thomson (now known as Thales ) didn't appear in the transaction except in the Cedel archives. He said SG used two non-published Cedel accounts." Investigation about anonymous denounciations On for the ghost account of Sarkozy?" 30 . It should be noted that the news article stated that the accounts were "falsely attributed", but didn't deny their existence. Furthermore, the magistrates decided not to ask the Sondrio bank for a subpoena personally targeting Nicolas Sarkozy, for unexplained reasons. This, in turn, should lead to the remark that the lack of independence of the French justice from the executive power has often been criticized, among others by the '' Syndicat De La Magistrature '', a magistrate trade union. Lawsuits alleging defamations On September 3 , 2004 , the Paris ''parquet'' opens up an investigation on charges of "defamation" following a complaint by Philippe Delmas , EADS' vice-president. Magistrates Jean-Marie d'Huy and Henri Pons are in charge of this new investigation concerning a peripherical aspect of Clearstream. In December 2005, magistrate Van Ruymbeke shows that the listings have been modified in order to falsely accuse French personnalities. The existence of unpublished secret accounts at Clearstream is not, however, questionned, but only the fact that the persons named by the anonymous delator effectively detained such accounts. On January 31 , 2006 , then Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy also constitutes himself as plaignant. A probable contender for the 2007 presidential election, Sarkozy is of course really upset about such allegations that he would have been linked to the Taiwan frigates scandal via a foreign and, moreover, secret account at Clearstream. He was quickly followed by other French political figures, including Dominique Strauss-Kahn on April 18 , and Alain Madelin and Jean-Pierre Chevènement on April 19 . EADS also deposed a complaint on April 13 , followed by Clearstream on April 20 . Clearstream didn't want to see its brandname associated with the Taiwan frigates scandal and clearly didn't enjoy the sudden advertising it received. The firm denied hosting any personal accounts, which in turn prompted Denis Robert to publish a list of personal accounts detained by Clearstream (which didn't include any of the personalities accused by the ''corbeau'') . The magistrates then ordered a perquisition at general Philippe Rondot , former member of the secret service DGSE (who had captured Carlos The Jackal in 1994 31 ) and affected to the French Ministry of Defence, and at the DGSE headquarters (nicknamed ''la piscine'', "the swimming pool" because of its former location). On March 28 , 2006 , in a declaration to the magistrates in charge of what became the "second Clearstream scandal", general Philippe Rondot directly accused prime minister Dominique De Villepin and president Jacques Chirac of being behind this manipulation 32 . It is not the existence itself of the accounts however that has been proved false, nor the existence of personnal accounts detained by Clearstream, but the claim that they belonged to such VIPs 33 . On the other side of the political board, the Socialist Party asked for the creation of a commission to investigate such use of the intelligence services. On April 6 , 2006 , in a new demonstration of the independence of French judiciary power from the executive, Jean-Claude Marin, Paris' public prosecutor of the Republic (''procureur de la République''), sent a letter to Jean-Claude Magendie, the court's president and to Yves Bot , attorney general, complaining about the attitudes of the investigative magistrates Henri Pons and Jean-Marie d'Huy. The Republic's public prosecutor complained that he wasn't told before hand of the location of the various perquisitions made 34 . The October surprise conspiracy See Also: October surprise conspiracy Ernest Backes also declared in ''Révélation$'' that he was in charge of the transfer of 7 million $ from Chase Manhattan Bank and Citibank , on January 16 , 1980 , to pay for the liberation of the American Hostages Held In Tehran's Embassy (Iran). He gave copies of the files shedding new light on the October surprise conspiracy to the National French Assembly. Bin Laden's Bahrain International Bank Bahrain International Bank , which has been suspected of moving Osama Bin Laden 's money, had an account number in Clearstream, according to the records given by Ernest Backes . Banks with accounts in Clearstream
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